Talk:Incineration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Incineration has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Portal	This environment-related article is part of the Environment WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. See WikiProject Environment and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.

	Energy Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, which collaborates on articles related to energy.
B	This article has been rated as b-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid	This article is on a subject of mid importance within energy.
Help with this template This article has been rated but has no comments. If appropriate, please review the article and leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

[edit] General comments

I believe the article reads more correctly now. I will be tweaking it to be NPOV or manipulated by misleading terms related to other forms of waste facility I have also put strikethroughs on most of the discussion below which dates back from articles that no longer exist or are relevant.--Alex 08:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Alex, I think you did an excellent job of blending the two merged articles. The only major comment I have is that the "Outputs from incineration" section should be combined with the "Pollution" section, which I will do in the next hour or so. Once again, great work!! - mbeychok 15:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comments! --Alex 15:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

This article has just had the Waste-to-energy plant article merged into it by Alex (see just below). As a result, it now has two displays of the same photo, two "External links" sections, two sections discussing how incinerators and waste-to-energy plants work, two similar discussion about the air pollutants in the combustion flue gases including diooxins and furans, and other such duplicate discussions of various items.

The article now needs someone with expertise and real-world experience in this field to blend the two articles together and to remove all of the duplicating information. - mbeychok 17:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up tag removed

I have removed the clean-up tag because the article has been re-written, re-arranged and largely cleaned during yesterday and today. That is not to say that it is perfect ... it still needs source referencing quite badly and perhaps more Wikifying. But it is a great deal better than it was. - mbeychok 19:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I have done quite a bit more Wikifying, adding additional information and references. I think the article is now in fairly good shape. - mbeychok 05:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coverage of aspects of incineration: incinerator design and technology

This article seems to have plenty about the effect on the environment, but where can people find useful matter about the design and technology of incinerators? Anthony Appleyard 12:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

This would be an ideal expansion of the incineration article. Comparisons between fluidised bed technology and other aspects such as gas clean up would be very useful. I do not have the knowledge to help in this area. --Alex 07:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Fluidized bed technology is used in other fields too, creating a seperate aticle to discribe the technology might be best.Walter Hartmann 02:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

See Fluidization and Fluidized bed reactor. They're very general. This incineration article is the best place to describe fluid bed incineration in particular, and comparison to other incinerator technologies such as multiple-hearth, rotary kiln, travelling grate, etc.BSMet94 04:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV in alterations on 12 October 2006

Alterations made on 21 October 2006 (see [1]) have a pattern of deletions that look like non-NPOV towards modern incinerators and away from old incinerators, including trying to rename the process of incineration. I have put some of this deleted matter back in this editing. Anthony Appleyard 08:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Anthony I agree. When I was combining the two old articles of incineration and waste-to-energy plant I tried to keep a valid balance between what modern incinerators are and what the old incinerators were like. I also created a new article waste-to-energy for disambiguation as there are other forms of plant to produce energy from waste without incineration.--Alex 10:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Argument against

I already see in the article part of the problem that exists with perceptions of incineration. Arguments against (in the article) include dioxin/furan emissions, heavy metals emissions, etc. You can't just say that as a blanket "argument against". It needs to be stated as follows: "dioxin/furan emissions in <waste type> incinerators." This failure to attache specific pollutants to specific waste types is what scares people (intentionally sometimes, by certain people) into thinking that all incineration pollutes with all of these scary chemicals, so naturally the uneducated will oppose even the most innocuous municipal sewage sludge incinerator. BSMet94 17:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another argument against incineration

Another argument which is not listed here, and which in my opinion is of main concern, is the fact that an incineration plant must be working all the time close to full capacity in order to minimize pollution. Which means that when investment is made for an incinerator, local authorities will be bound to feed it with enough waste for the next 20 or 30 years, thus impeding any waste prevention or waste diversion initiative. I dont know whether this point is scientifically valid, but I have heard and read it quite a few times here in France. 193.49.172.146 09:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This may be so for certain types of incinerators. However, typical fluidized bed incinerators for municipal WWTP sludge may be operated quite successfully on an intermittent basis, e.g. day shift only without any significant loss of efficiency or excessive fuel consumption with restart in the morning. Once operating, it's true that fluid bed incinerators have low turn-down capability, but the ability to quickly shut down and quickly restart overcomes this. Once again, not all incinerators and all waste types can be lumped together. BSMet94 03:52, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, few modern grate fired incineration plants only consists of a single oven line. This enables the plant to still receive waste during maintenance on one line, and to close down some oven lines during low supply periods. Even with a single oven line, modern flue gas cleaning (and all other parts of the line) is designed to work efficiently and comply with all emission limits at part load. So this rather an economical concern (lost income from closed-down periodes) than an emission problem.

This is currently not the concern i Europe at all though, since incineration capacity does not meet the demand due to 1) lack of incinerators in countries recently committed to incineration and 2) severely increased waste production (at least here in Scandinavia, unfortunately).

--Claush66 14:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PM2.5

I just elaborated a bit on the PM2.5 point. I relaxed the claim on infantility caused by incinerator PM2.5. No hard evidence have been cited, and I failed to find any myself - but the suspicion is real and backed by indices in the cited map.

I also (second time) removed the claim that PM2.5 is not monitored in the UK, since the cited BBC article specifically says that it is. Please find some source that contradict this. Again, I failed to find any source for that myself. I retained the statement that some countries does not monitor PM2.5, since this is not unlikely, but a citation is lacking.

The uncited information that IPPC says that stack top bag filters only collect 65-70% of the PM2.5 may be true (source please!), but these tiny bag filters are not to my knowledge relied on by incineration plants anymore (at least not in Europe). Does anyone know about places where such filters (dont confuse them with full size baghouse filters) constitute the only dust removal in incinerator plants?

(oops, forgot to sign - the above is by user:claush66

Somebody added some of the missing references about PM2.5 from incinerators. The English source was inserted as a citation from IPPC, that baghouse filters collect 65-70% PM2.5. It turned out to be the responce to an application for building a new plant, in which the applicant specified these numbers for his specific baghouse filter. The plant in question is certainly a modern incinerator with todays standard of flue gas cleaning equipment, and so is a good source. I changed the wording though, to indicate that this was a particular plant application, not a general IPPC statement/investigation.

The source mentions lower collection numbers for "particles smaller than PM2.5". Since PM2.5 are particles with aerodynamic diameters smaller than 2.5µm, what would "smaller than PM2.5" mean then??? It does not say e.g. PM0.5 instead. I removed this obscure citation, even though it does indeed appear in the source. Any explanations? Does it make sense to you?

Maybe some of the deails on PM2.5 effects would fit better in a dedicated article - or as an addition to e.g. the particulate article?

Can anybody check that I labeled the Italian sources on PM2.5 correctly, and possibly that the contents fits the text?

--Claush66 09:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I finally took the time to find some real measurements of PM2.5 from incinerators and included the information in the "flue gas cleaning" and "arguments for" sections to counter the claims in the "arguments against" section.

In agreement with my own experience with filtration of fine particles (and the dust collector article btw), fabric filters such as baghouse filters are excellent for the filtration of fine particles due to brownian motions. The numbers cited from an applicant in the IPPC source (see above) really pussles me. It may be a very coarse fabric or a severely underdimensioned filter area. Anyway, I will leave the citation in the "arguments against" section.

--Claus Hindsgaul 13:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I finally found the reason for the difference between the PM2.5 emissions measured in Europe - and the less-than-impressive collection efficiency of 65-70% cited in "arguments against". It turns out that the latter is the collection efficiency of the fabric itself. The buildup of a filter cake will improve real-world collection efficiencies significantly, especially for small particles. The client is cited for this point in the source. So I just mentioned the omission of the filter cake in the article without elaborating.

--Claus Hindsgaul 05:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The debate over incineration

This section lays out the key arguments clearly -- but it has two significant Wikipedia policy problems. First, although the section is about controversy, it does not cite or quote reliable sources. Second, the section narrative itself articulates the POV values and opinions. WP policy clearly asks that such POV judgments be put in the voice of verifiable sources. So, I put up templates for the section. Thanks! P.S Where do we read about incineration of hazardous and medical waste? Need some links? HG | Talk 14:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I just added a source for the very real Furan and Dioxin concerns and a BBC article on PM2.5 concerns, but we may also need a more critical source talking about emissions from older plants in the developing countries with more problems. I will try to find some more sources. I also tried to reorder the list to reflect the importance of the different points - at least as seen from European plants. This is of course at the risk of being seen as POV, but I do welcome any discussion on this.

HG: On the incineration of hazardous waste, you may have a look at 94/67/EC Incineration of hazardous waste directive.

--Claush66 09:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CO₂

The section on CO2 requires expansion and improvement along with more reasoning. One major thing that is missed here is that incinerators are hugely inefficient at generating electricity. Compared to other sources of energy they emit large amounts of CO2 per useful kwh of electricity produced. This section should also include mention of the benefits of CHP schemes in incinerators for improving their emissions of carbon. At the moment this section appears to push incineration as a good solution for CO2 emissions. In essence its not by any means, but it is better than uncontrolled, unengineered landfilling of waste.--Alex Marshall (talk) 08:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The following document contains some interesting areas discussing CO2 emissions from landfill and EfW plants. EU Working Group, Instruments Addressing Mixed Household Waste --Alex Marshall (talk) 08:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the section in question. Its scope was limited to describe the CO₂ emissions from incineration in the same manner as the other emissions. Thus it does not try to make cross-technology comparisons. The energy production per tonne of waste is documented elsewhere in the article, and could be used to make such comparisons. But in my opinion this belongs to another article, for example the waste-to-energy article. It is true that the presence of district heating is important for good energy recovery in incinerators, but this is described elsewhere, and does not belong to the emission section OMHO. --Claus Hindsgaul (talk) 13:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Alex, based on my comments above I suggest that you remove the request for expansion box from the emissions section. But I encourage you to follow up by writing a cross-technology comparison by e.g. building a table in the waste-to-energy article, as the information you request is not at all irrelevant and could be very informative - at a right place. --Claus Hindsgaul (talk) 15:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello Claus, as per your request I have removed the tag with some refinement of the wording. I felt that parts of the section were worded with a bias towards using incineration instead of landfilling. The comparison is valid for reference however one should really ensure that other alternatives were also included. I also altered the interwiki from anaerobic digestion to anaerobic decomposition (system versus biological process) for clarity. I agree an article comparing carbon emissions from different processes would be excellent, however I do not have the raw data for such. It is my personal view that carbon emissions per kwh of energy utilised should be one of the key factors in opting for a waste strategy choice. --Alex Marshall (talk) 14:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Alex. Fine edit. I didn't the notice any significant shift in bias, but if you agree that the text is now sufficiently unbiased, it's perfect with me. In the reviews I have seen, where the energy consumption for the sometimes extensive pretreatment required (especially for MBT and gasification) and production of pure oxygen (for most waste gasification processes) are considered, the carbon emissions per kWh have been significantly larger than for incineration, and it is not unusual to see a negative net energy output from the alternatives. It might be an excellent excercise for you to try to do your own review. It is true what you write in your first post above, that compared to other sources of energy, incineration emits relatively large amount of CO₂ (if biogenic origin is not considered), but I dare you to show me a waste processing technology with a better kWh per carbon emission ratio. --Claus Hindsgaul (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to refine my comments above: Technologies exists for treating pure speciality waste streams, of course. E.g. anaerobic digestion of some industrial wastes and composting of well sorted biogenic fractions. What I meant was that you will not find a technology for the unsorted nor residual fractions of municipal solid waste with a higher kWh per carbon emissions than incineration. I think we can agree that the pure and well sorted waste streams may be better treated with such other technologies, if it makes sense economically and energy wise.--Claus Hindsgaul (talk) 15:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)