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.

尽管在垃圾焚烧厂具有长期的实践经验，但在其设计条件下的运行仍面临挑战，这主要是由于垃圾进料的成分不均匀所致。

在本文的框架内，分析了6个废物焚化厂（5个炉排和1个流化床焚化炉）的运行情况，包括每小时的蒸汽产量，废物吞吐量，辅助燃料消耗和一年中的空气过剩。结果表明，大多数工厂的运行在废物输送期间受到了负面影响。与没有任何废物输送的时期相比，这些时间的蒸汽产量和废物吞吐量减少了多达3％。此外，还发现空气过剩量和辅助燃料消耗量增加了（高达2倍），这都导致了较低的环境绩效。结果还表明，与通过火车运送的工厂相比，通过卡车接收废物的焚化厂更容易受到性能的损害。可以通过以下事实来解释该观察结果：火车运输需要将废物从卡车转移到火车，这通常与废物的混合有关。

根据观察到的废物运送期间的运营损失，估计工厂运营商每年的相关经济损失约为100,000欧元。因此，为了提高废物焚烧厂的性能，建议对废物进行更好的混合，特别是在废物输送期间。