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BABCOCK & WILCOX CYCLONE VITRIFICATION TECHNOLOGY FOR CONTAMINATED SOIL
Citation:
Czuczwa, J. M., J. J. Warhol, H. Farzan, AND W. F. Musiol. BABCOCK & WILCOX CYCLONE VITRIFICATION TECHNOLOGY FOR CONTAMINATED SOIL. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/540/SR-93/507, 1993.
Impact/Purpose:
to inform the public
Description:
The Babcock & Wilcox 6 million Btu/hr pilot cyclone furnace was successfully used in a 2-yr Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) Emerging Technology project to melt and vitrify an EPA Synthetic Soil Matrix (SSM) spiked with 7,000 ppm lead, 1,000 ppm cadmium, and 1,500 ppm chromium. An advantage of vitrification over other thermal treatment technologies is that in addition to destruction of organic wastes, the resulting vitrified product captures and does not leach non-volatile heavy metals. Indeed, when operated at 50 to 150 Ib/hr of dry SSM feed, and from 100 to 300 Ib/hr of wet SSM feed, the cyclone technology was able to produce a non-leachable product (as measured by TCLP) from the hazardous soil. From 95% to 97% of the dry input SSM was incorporated within the slag. Stable cyclone operation was achieved during the 2-yr project which processed over 6 tons of clean, unspiked SSM and 5 tons of spiked SSM. During the thermal vitrification process, the heavy metals partition between the vitrified slag and the stack flyash. The capture of heavy metals in the slag was found to increase with increasing feed rate and with decreasing metal volatility. The treatment of the synthetic soil matrix resulted in a volume reduction of 25% to 35% (dry basis). Vitrification results in an easily-crushed, glassy product. This summary was developed by EPA's Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH, to announce key findings of the SITE Emerging Technology program that is documented in a separate report.