Process for the incineration of chlorinated organic materials

Claim 1

A process for the incineration of chlorinated organic materials containing about 20-70% of chlorine, wherein air and said materials are continuously introduced into the combustion zone of an incinerator whose walls are maintained at a temperature of about 800°-1500° C.; the gaseous combustion products are introduced into a quench zone which is cooled by aqueous hydrochloric acid spray; and at least one C 1 -C 4 hydrocarbon gas is injected into the guench zone at one or more points where the temperature is within the range of approximately 450°-1000° C.; the amount of air introduced into the combustion zone being such that there is an excess of oxygen of about 1-40% over the theoretical quantity required to fully burn the organic materials by converting all carbon atoms to carbon dioxide, allowing all chlorine atoms and sufficient hydrogen atoms to combine to hydrogen chloride, and converting all hydrogen atoms remaining after formation of hydrogen chloride to water; and the amount of hydrocarbon that is injected into the quench zone is expressed by the equation Z-Y·m/n, where Z is the volume percent of the hydrocarbon based on the volume of air fed into the combustion zone, and Y is an empirical value, within the range of 0.2 to 2.0; m is the volume percent of oxygen in the quench zone based on all the gases present in the quench zone but excluding water vapor and hydrogen chloride gas; and n is the number of atoms of hydrogen in the hydrocarbon molecule.