Thermal detoxification of conlaminated soils requires heating the soil to the destruction temperature for an adequate period of time. The process is expensive, partially due to the heat wasted by expelling high temperature effluent streams from the process. The staged fluidized bed contactor (SFBC) is an energy efficient cascaded system that is intended to recover energy from both the spent soil and hot gases leaving the combustion zone of SFBC. Models of the SFBC were developed to assess the impact of incineration stage flow regime, and to show the adequacy of the shallow SFBC as a cost-effective thermal decontaminator.