The major species of heavy metal aerosol resulting from water cooling systems and spray dryer systems during incineration processes.

Trace toxic metals in municipal solid waste may escape from the incineration process in flue gas, in dry collected ash, in wet scrubbed ash, or as a suspended aerosol. Therefore, understanding the behavior of heavy metals in the flue gas and the best controls in the air pollution control equipment are important and necessary. The control conditions of water cooling and spray dryer systems during incineration processes significantly influence the formation of heavy metal compounds. The formation of chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), and cadmium (Cd) species under various control conditions (water cooling tower and spray dryer reactor) was investigated in this study. The object of the experiment is to understand the effects of water cooling and spray dryer systems individually on the formation of heavy metal species. The operating parameters that are evaluated include different control systems, control temperatures, and chlorine content. A thermodynamic equilibrium model was also used to evaluate experimental data. In order to match real incineration conditions, a two-stage simulation was performed in this experiment. The results showed that the relationship of speciation between the simulation prediction and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis is consistent for Cr compounds; both indicated that Cr2O3 is the major species. The relationship is almost the same for Cd compounds, but not for Pb compounds.