A common perception of plasma arc treatment systems for municipal solid waste incineration ash is that the resulting vitrified slag is inert from an environmental perspective. Research was conducted to examine this hypothesis and to assess whether reduced pollutant release results from pollutant depletion during the process of the ash with plasma, or encapsulation in the glassy vitrified matrix. The concentrations of four discrete municipal solid waste incineration ash samples before and after plasma arc vitrification in a bench-scale unit were compared. Slag and untreated ash samples were leached using several standardized approaches and mobility among the four metals of interest (e.g. As, Cd, Pb and Sb) varied across samples, but was generally high (as high as 100% for Cd). Comparison across methods did not indicate substantial encapsulation in the vitrified slag, which suggests that reduced pollutant release from plasma arc vitrified slag is due to pollutant depletion by volatilization, not encapsulation. This has significant implications for the management of air pollution control residues from waste-to-energy facilities using plasma arc vitrification.

对城市固体废物焚烧灰等离子弧处理系统的普遍看法是，从环境角度来看，由此产生的玻璃化炉渣是惰性的。进行了研究以检验这一假设，并评估污染物释放的减少是否是由于在用等离子体处理灰烬或封装在玻璃状玻璃化基质中的过程中污染物消耗造成的。比较了在实验室规模单元中等离子弧玻璃化前后四个离散城市固体废物焚烧灰样品的浓度。使用几种标准化方法对矿渣和未处理的灰分样品进行浸出，四种感兴趣的金属（例如 As、Cd、Pb 和 Sb）之间的迁移率因样品而异，但普遍较高（Cd 高达 100%）。不同方法之间的比较并未表明玻璃化渣中有大量的包封，这表明等离子弧玻璃化渣中污染物释放的减少是由于污染物通过挥发而不是包封而耗尽。这对于使用等离子弧玻璃化处理来自废物能源设施的空气污染控制残留物的管理具有重要意义。