Investigation of sludge waste incineration in a novel rotating fluidized bed incinerator

New regulations in the United Kingdom have forbidden sea dumping since Dece mber 1998, and in the near future new Incinerators will be required to disp ose of about five million wet tonnes of sewage sludge per year. A research programme is being carried out at the Sheffield University Waste Incinerati on Centre (SUWIC) to design and operate a novel high-efficiency relating fl uidized bed (RFB) incinerator suitable for burning large quantities of sewa ge sludge. Incineration experiments carried out in a 200 mm ID rotating flu idized bed have demonstrated that the novel RFB technology is well suited t o the incineration of sludge waste. Pre-dried chicken waste pellets, with s imilar characteristics to sewage sludge, were used as a sewage sludge surro gate. Water was added to the dry sludge pellets to generate the required mo isture content. Results from this study showed that the sludge thoughput fa r the RFB incinerator was significantly higher than the conventional fluidi zed bed incinerator. It was found that the bed hydrodynamics were critical for the sludge incineration process in the REB and design of the distributo r plate had a strong effect on the quality of bed mixing, and hence on the sludge incinceration process.