Abstract
ABSTRACT
Incineration or, more politicallY, waste thermal treatment is a preferred method for waste handling on board naval platforms. It can accomplish several goals of at-sea treatment of shipboard wastes, including volume reduction, sterilization, and detoxification. It is also considered to be the most cost-effective approach available and among the safest, requiring little specialized personnel training. Unfortunately, existing seaworthy incinerator designs that meet the naval requirements of compactness and minimal weight are not expected to meet the higher throughput demands of planned shipboard operations. This has lead to the exploration of novel approaches, such as the use of forced acoustics to improve heat transfer, turbulent mixing, and firing density in order to reduce the size and increase the throughput of incineration systems.
Energy and Environmental Research Corporation (EER) has designed and constructed an experimental facility to study the application of forced acoustics for the improvement of waste thermal treatment as it might be applied to the next generation of naval platforms that are now in the conceptual phase of development. The facility is based on a 30-year-old design for shipboard blackwater sludge incinerator. Through acoustic forcing it is expected that the process throughput can be substantially increased, principally as a result of enhanced heat and mass transfer between the primary combustion products and the waste stream. At the same time, intelligent design changes and the potential for active control of the incineration process will enable the thermal treatment of a wider range of liquid shipboard waste streams. The status of these research efforts, preliminary experimental results, and plans for future development are discussed.
Key words:
Waste thermal treament; acoustics; active control; blackwater; sludge; MARPOL
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