Incineration is used as a treatment for a very wide range of wastes.

Incineration itself is commonly only one part of a complex waste treatment system that altogether, provides for the overall management of the broad range of wastes that arise in society. The objective of waste incineration is to treat wastes so as to reduce its volume and hazard, whilst capturing (and thus concentrating) or destroying potentially harmful substances that may be released during incineration. Incineration processes can also provide a means to enable recovery of the energy, mineral and/or chemical content of certain fractions of the waste. The main stages of incineration are: 1. drying and degassing here, volatile content is evolved (e.g. hydrocarbons and water) at temperatures generally between 100 and 300 C. The drying and degassing process do not require any oxidising agent and are only dependent on the supplied heat 2. pyrolysis and gasification - pyrolysis is the further decomposition of organic substances in the absence of an oxidising agent at approx. 400 700 C. Gasification of the carbonaceous residues is the reaction of the residues with water vapour and CO 2 at temperatures, typically between 700 and 1000 C, but can occur at temperatures up to 1600 C. Thus, solid organic matter is transferred to the gaseous phase. In addition to the temperature, water, steam and oxygen support this reaction 3. oxidation - the combustible gases created in the previous stages are oxidised, depending on the selected incineration method, at flue-gas temperatures generally between 800 and 1450 C. The main types of waste to which incineration is applied as a treatment are: municipal wastes (residual wastes - not pre-treated) pre-treated municipal wastes (e.g. selected fractions or RDF) non-hazardous industrial wastes and packaging hazardous wastes sewage sludges clinical wastes. The precise design of a waste incineration plant will change according to the type of waste that is being treated. The owners and operators of incineration plants may be municipal bodies, as well as private companies. Public/private partnerships are also common. The finance cost of capital investments may vary depending upon the ownership. Waste incineration plants receive fees for the disposal of the waste. They can also produce and sell electricity, steam, and heat, and recover other products, such as bottom ashes for use as civil construction material, iron scrap and non-ferrous scrap for use in the metal industry, HCl, salt or gypsum. The price paid for these commodities, and the investment required to produce them, has a significant impact on the operational cost of the installation. It can also be decisive when considering specific technical investments and process designs (e.g. whether heat can be sold at a price that justifies the investment required for its supply).

The basic linear structure of a waste incineration plant may include the following operations. incoming waste reception storage of waste and raw materials pretreatment of waste (where required, on-site or off-site) loading of waste into the process thermal treatment of the waste energy recovery (e.g. boiler) and conversion flue-gas cleaning flue-gas cleaning residue management (from flue-gas treatment) flue-gas discharge emissions and control monitoring waste water control and treatment (e.g. from site drainage, flue-gas treatment, storage) ash/bottom ash management and treatment (arising from the combustion stage) solid residue discharge/disposal. Different types of thermal treatments are applied to the different types of wastes, however not all thermal treatments are suited to all wastes. Municipal solid waste - can be incinerated in several combustion systems including traveling grate, rotary kilns, and fluidised beds. Fluidised bed technology requires MSW to be of a certain particle size range this usually requires some degree of pretreatment and/or the selective collection of the waste. Incineration of sewage sludge - this takes place in rotary kilns, multiple hearth, or fluidized bed incinerators. Co-combustion in grate-firing systems, coal combustion plants and industrial processes is also applied. Sewage sludge often has a high water content and therefore usually requires drying, or the addition of supplementary fuels to ensure stable and efficient combustion. Incineration of hazardous and medical waste - rotary kilns are most commonly used, but grate incinerators (including co-firing with other wastes) are also sometimes applied to solid wastes, and fluidised bed incinerators to some pre-treated materials. Static furnaces are also widely applied at on-site facilities at chemical plants. Other processes have been developed that are based on the de-coupling of the phases which also take place in an incinerator: drying, volatilisation, pyrolysis, carbonisation and oxidation of the waste. Gasification using gasifying agents such as, steam, air, carbon-oxides or oxygen is also applied. These processes aim to reduce flue-gas volumes and associated flue-gas treatment costs. Some of these developments met technical and economical problems when they were scaled-up to commercial, industrial sizes, and are therefore pursued no longer. Some are used on a commercial basis (e.g. in Japan) and others are being tested in demonstration plants throughout Europe, but still have only a small share of the overall treatment capacity when compared to incineration. Combustion is an exothermic (heat generating) process. The majority of the energy produced during combustion is transferred to the flue-gases. The energy transferred may be used on-site (thus replacing imported energy) and/or offsite. The energy supplied may be used for a wide variety of other processes. Commonly heat and steam are used for industrial or district heating systems, industrial process heat and steam and occasionally as the driving force for cooling and air conditioning systems. Electricity is often

supplied to national distribution grids and/or used within the installation.