Gaseous and/or liquid residues of chemical production processes are frequently disposed of in comparatively small hazardous waste incinerators directly on-site. With respect to the extremely high pollutant emissions, multistage wet gas cleaning processes are used that consist in most cases of a quench, one or more wet scrubbers and an optional aerosol separation stage. In order to select a suitable design of the gas cleaning process and equipment, besides the specific technical performance of each apparatus, particularly economic criteria have to be considered, like maintenance as well as investment costs. Additionally, the choice of the suitable material of construction plays a major role, especially at the transition section of dry to wetted gas in the quench. The paper compares qualitatively or quantitatively different equipment and process alternatives towards their performance. The present comparison indicates that only the consideration of all relevant parameters yields an optimal solution.