Draft Final Report. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Contract Number: 68-02-4252 "MRI Project No. 8863-A(15)."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development (EPA/ORD), and the Headquarters Air Force Engineering and Services Center (HQ AFESC) are interested in evaluating the incinerability ranking of principal organic hazardous constituents (POHCs) and surrogate compounds that are used for destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) tests at hazardous wast incinerators. The results of these evaluations will aid development of a more effective and cost-efficient trial burn and performance monitoring process. As a part of the evaluation process, a test was conducted at a full-scale hazardous waste incinerator. There were two test objectives. The first was to evaluate an incinerability ranking system commonly used by EPA. This system ranks organic compounds based on the gas-phase thermal stability under oxygen-starved conditions and is based on available experimental data. The results of this study indicated that the ranking system correctly predicted the relative incinerability of some but not all POHCs. The second objective was to evaluate sulfur hexafluoride (SFb6s) as a surrogate for POHC destruction. Sulfur hexafluoride is one of the most stable compounds known with respect to thermal decomposition. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the SFb6s DRE would represent a lower bound to other POHC DREs in an incinerator. This study showed that the SFb6s DRE was conservative relative to POHC DREs."--Abstract