The paper discusses the development of a simple indicator--Unsatisfied Oxygen Demand (UOD)--for measuring the performance of incinerators, industrial furnaces, and boilers burning hazardous waste. Current RCRA regulations use destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) of the principal organic hazardous constituents (POHCs) in the feed as the main regulatory parameter to determine performance of facilities incinerating hazardous waste during a RCRA trial burn. Calculating DRE, however, is expensive and time consuming on a regular basis, and it is impossible to measure DRE continuously using existing on-line analyzers. In addition, DRE does not address potential emissions of toxic compounds that can be formed as products of incomplete combustion (PICs) during incineration. Experiments on a 73 kW rotary kiln incinerator simulator equipped with a 58.4 kW afterburner/control temperature tower have been performed to aid in the development of a uniform, easy-to-measure performance indicator for comparing transient puffs generated by batch incineration of different types of surrogate wastes. By utilizing time-integrated responses from process gas analyzers, rather than instantaneous or averaged responses, it is possible to derive an indicator of the relative degree of local oxygen starvation that waste material was exposed to while passing through the incinerator.

"EPA 600/D-90/055".