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A Closer Look at Moving Grate Incineration

A Treatment Method for Medical Waste

moving grate incineration

This is one of the oldest waste disposal systems and has been in use for over one hundred years. Between 2003 and 2011 alone, over one hundred new moving grate incinerator plants were built globally. This system of incineration has the biggest plant capacity of any other thermal treatment type. Most units can operate for eight thousand hours a year with just a one month stop for maintenance. It’s still the only waste treatment type capable of handling over three thousand tons of waste a day without the need for any pretreatment.

Most moving grate incineration plants have hydraulic feeders which feed the waste directly into the combustion chamber. In this chamber there’s a moving grate that burns the waste, a boiler for recovering the heat, a pollution control system to remove toxins from the flue gas, and a discharge unit for the fly ash to escape.

First, a crane empties the waste onto the grate. The waste gets dried on the grate and is then incinerated at temperatures of around 850°C. After that, the waste moves to an ash pit where it is treated with water.

Moving grate incinerators are the treatment of choice for processing large volumes of waste quickly, decreasing the need for landfills and recovering energy for electricity production.