Relation between toxic inputs and dioxin and furan outputs for municipal-waste incinerators (MWIs)

Abstract

Using our simplified model for dioxin and furan production in MWIs, we have estimated the required changes in toxic inputs to produce n-fold increases in the outputs of toxic equivalents (TEs). Since waste inputs generally reside on the furnace grates for about 30 min, TE output-variations should be considered for time periods equal to or longer than about 30 min. With these long averaging times, the amounts of toxic-input augmentations required for 10-fold output increases in full-scale MWIs become unreasonably large, except for the deliberate use of MWIs as toxic-waste burners. With very clean MWIs, substantial toxic-waste incineration may be combined with burning of municipal wastes on a controlled basis.