Use of hazardous waste in cement kilns backed

Cement kiln operators who are making use of hazardous waste as a partial substitute for fossil fuel now have a better engineering foundation for determining what is going on in the kilns and how to optimize their operations. A just-released study by a scientific advisory board of experts commissioned by the Cement Kiln Recycling Coalition (CKRC) in Washington, D.C., has provided an indepth look at such operations and finds the practice to be a "fundamentally sound" technology. Long residence times and high temperatures in cement kilns maximize the combustion efficiency for waste-derived fuels, according to the study report. The scientific advisory board notes that all organic compounds can be destroyed in a kiln at 99.9999% efficiency. Also, the behavior of metals in cement kilns can be readily measured, predicted, and controlled, it says, concluding that cement kilns are extremely efficient in reducing metals emissions. The two-year study was carried out by a work group of ...