An assessment of off-gas treatment technologies for application to thermal treatment of Department of Energy wastes

The purpose of this report is to describe available air pollution control technologies for pollutants generated by thermal treatment of DOE wastes. A basic process for selecting air pollution control devices is summarized. Types of air pollutants generated by thermal treatment units are described, as well as the factors that influence the types and quantities of pollutants generated. This report also reviews applicable regulatory emission requirements. A listing of available and emerging air pollution control technologies and a brief introduction to the basic engineering principles involved in collecting each of the pollutants are presented. Section 7 of this report contains two types of evaluations for air pollution control devices. First, comparative evaluations of individual technologies are presented, based upon criteria generally relevant to DOE facilities. Using this evaluation system, the spray dryer absorber received the highest rating for acid-gas removal; high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters received the highest rating for particulate removal; activated carbon adsorption received the highest rating for the removal of both toxic metals and residual hydrocarbons; and selective catalytic reduction received the highest rating for nitrogen oxide abatement. Also evaluated in Sect. 7 is the expected performance of different types of pollution control systems on two hypothetical waste streams. The waste streams were defined based upon typical DOE wastes and thermal treatment technologies. Section 8 presents conclusions for this report. Two appendixes are included with this report. The first appendix contains a brief description of all the technologies evaluated and the second lists of some of the vendors for each of the technologies that was evaluated