ESTIMATION OF RESIDENCE TIME IN VOC INCINERATION

A calculation procedure has been developed for evaluation of residence time for thermal incineration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to CO2 and H2O which takes into account change in reaction rate with tem perature, heat losses through the walls of the incinerator and change in concentration of both oxygen and the VOC. The values for residence time obtained by means of this procedure are typically less than 50% o f those obtained by using an arithmetic mean incineration temperature. Use of an arithmetic mean incineration temperature to evaluate reside nce time is inappropriate because it does not satisfactorily account f or the rapid increase in the rate of VOC incineration with temperature , which follows an Arrhenius relationship. An approximate version of t he above procedure has been developed for preliminary calculations and gives good agreement with the results obtained by means of the more r igorous model, for both adiabatic and non-adiabatic conditions. Experi mental studies to test the model's predictions are strongly recommende d.