Research on combustion characteristics and parameter optimization of a 500 t/d municipal solid waste incinerator

The incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) has attracted widespread attention in the field of energy recovery due to its advantages of volume reduction, harmlessness, and resource utilization. This study takes a 500 t/d incinerator as the object, combines the on-site measurement data for validation, and explores the influence of the primary air distribution ratio (PADR), moisture content (M), and load (Q) on combustion characteristics. The results show that increasing the air ratio in the drying section can improve the water evaporation efficiency, and increasing the air ratio in the burnout section promotes the re-combustion of residual volatile and fixed carbon. At rated conditions, as the M increases from 25 % to 40 %, the outlet flue gas temperature decreases by 140K. Adjusting the air ratio in the drying section to 6 %–12 % facilitates concentrated combustion of MSW and enhances the uniformity of the temperature field. Setting the PADR = 1.0:1.7:2.3:2.3:1.7:1.0 (drying and burnout sections:1.0; combustion section: 1.7:2.3:2.3:1.7) and keeping M ≤ 35 % ensures an incineration effect with Q ≤ 120 %. However, at Q = 140 %, incomplete combustion of MSW is observed, with residual volatile and fixed carbon fractions reaching 5.29 % and 3.95 %, respectively. This study provides a scientific basis for optimizing the operating parameters of MSW incinerators, which can effectively improve incineration efficiency and the energy recovery of MSW.