APPLICATION OF ACOUSTIC AND DESIGN ENHANCEMENT TO ONBOARD NAVAL WASTETHERMAL-TREATMENT FACILITIES

Incineration or, more politically, waste thermal treatment is a prefer red method for waste handling on board naval platforms, It can accompl ish several goals of at-sea treatment of shipboard wastes, including v olume reduction, sterilization, and detoxification, It is also conside red to be the most cost-effective approach available and among the saf est, requiring little specialized personnel training. Unfortunately, e xisting 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 acousti cs to improve heat transfer, turbulent mixing, and firing density in o rder to reduce the size and increase the throughput of incineration sy stems. Energy and Environmental Research Corporation (EER) has designe d 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 n ow in the conceptual phase of development. The facility is based on a 30-year-old design for shipboard blackwater sludge incinerator. Throug h acoustic forcing it is expected that the process throughput can be s ubstantially increased, principally as a result of enhanced heat and m ass transfer between the primary combustion products and the waste str eam, At the same time, intelligent design changes and the potential fo r active control of the incineration process will enable the thermal t reatment of a wider range of liquid shipboard waste streams, The statu s of these research efforts, preliminary experimental results, and pla ns for future development are discussed.