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 º 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 off-
site. 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.