Abstract: Small-scale waste treatment facilities for municipal solid waste in remote areas of China (such as high-altitude, severely cold, and island regions) face bottlenecks including poor operational stability, difficulty in meeting pollutant emission standards, and high operation and maintenance costs. Based on an analysis of the current status of small-scale waste treatment technologies at home and abroad, the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical grate furnaces and pyrolysis gasification technologies were compared, and pointed out that grate furnace technology had greater reliability in dealing with waste with high moisture content and low calorific value. Given the characteristics of low thermal capacity and large fluctuation in small-scale facilities, systematic research directions for optimization were proposed. In terms of combustion system optimization, the focus is on waste shear crushing pretreatment, lightweight air-cooled grates, and high-performance composite refractory materials. For intelligent control, machine learning can be employed to establish a combustion prediction model based on image recognition, enhancing the system’s disturbance rejection capability. Regarding flue gas purification, a deep dry deacidification process using sodium bicarbonate and an integrated removal technology with catalytic filter media can be developed to simplify the process flow. For fly ash disposal, a synergistic treatment approach of “agglomeration and weight gain plus in-situ return to the furnace” can be explored. The research findings can provide systematic technical support for the construction of environmental infrastructure and the enhancement of governance capacity in remote areas of China.

Key words: municipal solid waste, small-scale incineration technology, stable combustion, intelligent control, flue gas purification, fly ash co-processing