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DEVELOPMENT OF A HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATOR TARGET ANALYTE LIST OF PRODUCTS OF INCOMPLETE COMBUSTION
Citation:
Lemieux*, P M. AND J V. Ryan*. DEVELOPMENT OF A HAZARDOUS WASTE INCINERATOR TARGET ANALYTE LIST OF PRODUCTS OF INCOMPLETE COMBUSTION. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/R-98/076 (NTIS PB99-102618), 1998.
Impact/Purpose:
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Description:
The report gives results of pilot-scale incineration testing to develop a comprehensive list of products of incomplete combustion (PICs) from hazardous waste combustion (HWC) systems. Project goals were to: (1) identify the total mass of organic compounds sufficiently to estimate the toxicity of the complex mixture; (2) serve as the target analyte list for Omnibus risk assessments and, possibly, for the risk-check element of the yet-to-be-proposed rule on HWC; and (3) enable EPA's Office of Solid Waste to assess the relative importance of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans to other PICs. The tests were performed under varied combustion conditions feeding a mixed surrogate waste, resulting in the generation of many PICs. While many of the PICs were identified as target analytes using standardized sampling and analytical methods, most of the PICs in the inciner-ation emissions were not target analytes. Although a substantial number have been tentatively identified, a considerably larger number have not been identified. It can be concluded from these experiments that the current sampling and analytical schemes for characterizing HWC emissions provide an incomplete picture of the emission profile. Innovative analytical techniques, such as multi-dimensional gas chromatography, appear to show great promise for resolving the unknowns.