ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the constituents normally encountered in industrial waste streams and how these constituents affect the ultimate design of the thermal oxidizer. There are two ways to characterize a waste stream: direct and indirect. In the direct method, each specific compound in the waste stream is identified along with its concentration. An indirect method is to provide an ultimate analysis of the waste stream. Many times, thermal oxidation equipment vendors are presented with a waste stream composition at a single flow rate and single composition. Very few processes produce waste streams that do not have some variability. The process design for this type of waste gas stream uses a conventional burner firing a liquid or gaseous fuel. Ambient air is used for combustion air. The contaminated inert gas stream is introduced into the combustion chamber downstream of the burner flame root.
