The kinetics of vaporization of a heavy metal from a fluidized waste by an inverse method

This study addresses the emission of heavy metals during the incineration of municipal solid waste. A global method was developed to determine the vaporization rate of the metal from the on-line analysis of exhaust gas. This method differs from direct models, which predict the time course of the metal concentration in the gas from the vaporization rate profile, but which are not practicable because this vaporization rate cannot be measured in real incinerators burning real wastes. The method is based on the determination of the global rate of release of heavy metal from the combustion of model wastes in a fluidized bed. It is an inverse method, which involves only the measured concentration of heavy metal in the exhaust gases and a model developed at the reactor scale. The thermal treatment of model wastes spiked with a metal was performed in a laboratory- scale fluidized bed. In fact, a solid matrix derived from real waste was dosed with Cd, Pb, or Zn and burned to simulate the metal’s release during the incineration of municipal solid waste. An on-line analysis system was linked to the gas outlet of the reactor, and the metal’s vaporization was tracked successfully by continuously measuring by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) the relative concentration of the metal in exhaust gases. On the theoretical front, a bubbling bed model was developed and validated to calculate the metal’s vaporization rate from its concentration-time profile in the outlet gas. The inverse method consists in identifying these vaporization rates at the particle level from only the on-line diagnostic results and using the model, whatever the waste considered. The data obtained may be used in any process, in which wastes are heated rapidly (several hundreds of degrees per second), as in fluidized beds.