Mixing, modelling and measurements of incinerator bed combustion

The safe disposal of municipal solid waste has now become an urgent environ mental problem. The traditional method of landfilling waste has created so many environmental problems that countries including Denmark, Holland and G ermany have imposed severe restrictions on landfilling burnable waste. With up to 1 tonne of municipal waste being generated by every individual annua lly in the UK, incineration is now at the forefront of combustion research, as developed countries recognize the environmentally friendly advantages o f this technology. An efficient incinerator is not only assessed by the amo unt of heat recovery but also by the levels of emissions and quality of the ash it produces. Incinerator designs must therefore be fully optimized so that they can control emissions by reducing the production of harmful pollu tants such as dioxins, furans, NO, and SO,. Hence, incinerator bed combusti on is a vital area that urgently needs further investigation. At SUWIC, the present work concentrates on the development of a comprehensive and reliab le model for the incinerator bed combustion process. The results from the i ncinerator burning bed model can then provide the much needed boundary cond itions for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of the gas phase re acting turbulent flow in the freeboard region of an incinerator. In additio n to the development of the computational model, the work involves several parallel activities, including experimental investigations into waste combu stion, solid mixing and prevention of slag formation and instrumentation de velopment.