Thermal desorption: A technology review
- Air Force, Kelly AFB, TX (United States)
The development of new and innovative technologies to treat hazardous waste is driven by the extreme costs associated with remediating contaminated sites. One innovative technology is thermal desorption, which heats soils, sediments, and sludges to volatilize contaminants present, then recovers the contaminants or destroys them. This paper discusses thermal desorption systems in detail, including evaluations of their performance, cost, and safety. The performance of thermal desorption units is determined by reviewing results of Superfund demonstration projects, remedial efforts, and pilot tests. These results indicate that thermal desorption is able to meet treatment standards for wastes contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), fuels, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Additionally, thermal desorption is competitive from a cost standpoint, with low temperature thermal desorption among the least expensive remediation technologies and high temperature thermal desorption in the middle of the cost band. The final aspect of thermal desorption discussed is worker exposure from both stack emissions and fugitive emissions. Air contaminant modeling was used to estimate ambient contaminant concentrations based on stack emission limits from previous remedial efforts. These estimates were compared with the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) and the OSHA Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs). Through this comparison, it was determined that, if the stack emissions limits are not exceeded, the ambient contaminant concentrations ranged from one order to seven orders of magnitude below the exposure standards.
- OSTI ID:
- 679399
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-980632-; TRN: IM9940%%218
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 91. annual meeting and exhibition of the Air and Waste Management Association, San Diego, CA (United States), 14-18 Jun 1998; Other Information: PBD: 1998; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the 91. annual meeting and exhibition. Bridging international boundaries: Clean production for environmental stewardship; PB: [5000] p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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