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Focuses on the generation of data for the design and operation of a novel high-efficiency rotating fluidized bed incinerator suitable for burning the large quantities of sewage sludge which can no longer be dumped at sea. Heavy metals concentrations in sewage sludge; Fuel injection and thermal inertia.

Detailed mathematical simulations as well as experiments have been carried out for the combustion of wood chips and the incineration of simulated municipal solid wastes in a bench-top stationary bed and the effects of devolatilisation rate and moisture level in the fuel were assessed in terms of ignition time, burning rate, reaction zone thickness, peak flame temperature, combustion stoichiometry and unburned gas emissions at the bed top. It is found that devolatilisation kinetic rate has a noticeable effects on the ignition time, peak flame temperature, CO and H2 emissions at the bed top and the proportion of char burned in the final stage (char burning only) of the combustion. However, it has only a minor effect on the other parameters. Reaction zone thickness ranges from 20 to 55 mm depending on the moisture level in fuel and an increase in the moisture level causes a shift of the combustion stoichiometry to more fuel-lean conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The rising popularity of incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) calls for detailed mathematical modelling and understanding of the incineration process. In this paper, governing equations for mass, momentum and heat transfer for both solid and gaseous phases in a moving bed in a solid-waste incineration furnace are described and relevant sub-models are presented. The burning rates of volatile hydrocarbons in the moving bed of solids are limited not only by the reaction kinetics but also the mixing of the volatile fuels with the under-fire air. The mixing rate is averaged across a computation cell and correlated to a number of parameters including local void fraction of the bed, gas velocity and a length scale comparable to the particle size in the bed. A correlation equation is also included to calculate the mixing in the freeboard area immediately next to the bed surface. A small-scale fixed bed waste incinerator was built and test runs were made in which total mass loss from the bed, temperature and gas composition at different locations along the bed height were measured. A 2-D bed-modelling program (FLIC) was developed which incorporates the various sub-process models and solves the governing equations for both gases and solids. Thermal and chemical processes are mainly confined within a layer about 5–9 times in thickness of the averaged particle size in the burning bed. For a large part of the burning process, the total mass loss rate was constant until the solid waste was totally dried out and a period of highly rising CO emission followed. The maximum bed temperature was around 1200 K. The whole burning process ended within 60 min. Big fluctuations in species concentration were observed due to channelling and subsequent ‘catastrophic’ changes in the local bed conditions. Reasonably good agreement between modelling and measurements has been achieved. Yet the modelling work is complicated by the channelling phenomenon in the bed. Numerical simulations without consideration of the channelling effect produced very good agreement with experiments concerning the total mass loss, but significant discrepancy exists for temperature and gas composition profiles. Transient phenomena such as the breaking of waste particles and the “catastrophic” creation of new burning channels occurring during waste incineration is a vital area requiring further investigation at the fundamental level. The underlying theory of bed behaviour must be extended to include these transient events. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]