Despite long-term practical experience with waste incineration plants, their operation under the conditions for which they were designed pose challenges, mainly due to the heterogeneous composition of the waste feed. Within the framework of the present paper, the operation of 6 waste incineration plants (five grate and one fluidized bed incinerator) have been analysed in terms of hourly steam production, waste throughput, auxiliary fuel consumption and air surplus over one year. The results reveal that the operation of the majority of the plants was negatively influenced during times of waste delivery. Reductions in steam production and waste throughput of up to 3% were observed for these times in comparison to periods without any delivery of waste. Furthermore, an increase in air surplus and auxiliary fuels consumption (up to a factor of 2) was noticed, both resulting in lower environmental performance. The results further indicate that incineration plants receiving their waste via trucks are more prone to impairments of performance than plants supplied via train delivery. This observation might be explained by the fact that train delivery requires a transfer of the waste from truck to train, which is typically associated with a mixing of the waste. Based on the observed impairment of the operation during waste delivery times, the related economic loss for plant operators is estimated to be several 100,000 Euros per year. Hence, in order to improve the performance of waste incineration plants, a better mixing of the waste, in particular during times of waste delivery, is recommended.
Keywords: Auxiliary fuels; Efficiency; Operation; Steam; Waste-to-energy.
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