The cooling rate is the most important factor affecting the partition of vapor metallic compounds in the downstream of waste incinerator. In this work, an experiment was performed in a bench-scale incinerator to reveal the relationship between the cooling rate and the partition of heavy and alkali metals. Experimental results showed that the increase in cooling rate had a negative effect on the capture of heavy and alkali metals by silica filter in the temperature range of 26-160 degrees C/s. The higher cooling rate results in the formation of smaller particles, which are not easy to be captured by the silica filter. The optimum cooling rate for Cu gassolid transformation was about 53.3 degrees C/s in the temperature range of 600-800 degrees C, and that for Na and K were 26.67 and 26.67 degrees C/s, respectively. The morphology observed by scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive using X-ray (SEM-EDX) confirmed that a large amount of vapor mineral matter or metals were transformed into solid or liquid phase by nucleation or condensation on the surface of the particles in the second and third filters. Moreover, the mass fraction of Pb in the second filter was as high as 37.0%, which means that the recovery of heavy and alkali metals by the multi-section filter system is feasible. Copyright (C) 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.