Abstract: Spent potliners from the aluminum processing industry are destroyed by gasification technology to produce an inert vitreous frit and useful gases including hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. In one embodiment, the potliner material is processed in a slagging gasification unit in which the potliner material a bed of coke or other particulate material moves down through a preheating zone, a reduction zone and an oxidation zone where oxygen is injected into the then-incandescent bed. In a second embodiment, particles of spent potliner material are entrained in two rotating gaseous streams which are tangentially introduced into upper and lower regions of a processing vessel. In a third embodiment, particles of spent potliner material are entrained in and reacted with a stream of gases which flows down from a burner through a processing vessel.