Journal of Energy Engineering

Incineration, in spite of being a costly option, is widely used for the treatment and disposal of solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes. Use of fluidized beds paved the way for less polluting incinerators. Circulating fluidized bed systems can burn low-heat-content watery wastes without (or with minimum) auxiliary fuel. Equations of heat transfer and heat balance for different zones of a recirculating fluidized bed (RCFB) incineration system are presented along with a computational procedure to predict the performance details of the system. The method presented is applied to compute the performance of an RCFB incineration system burning distillery spent wash. Results show that RCFB incinerators are capable of burning a spent wash of solids content considerably lower than 60%. The incineration units in operation at present concentrate spent wash to about 60% solids content in external evaporators for autogenous burning. This costly and difficult operation can be minimized by the use of RCFB for incineration.

Though it may be possible to model any complex process mathematically, cold model experimental studies of the process/operation are considered to be essential and important. These studies are less difficult to perform than the actual processes, and they are useful in better understanding the complex processes and operations, foreseeing the problems that may crop up during the actual operation, and optimizing and designing the system. Experimental studies are carried out on a transparent semicircular cold model of a recirculating fluidized bed (RCFB) incinerator intended for burning low-heat-content liquid waste. Information from the cold model experiments are used to design the incinerator by choosing suitable operational and design parameters.

The development of any micro or small hydro plant requires some preliminary considerations to study the feasibility of the project. Different expertise required at this first stage and awareness about legal and governmental issues make the feasibility study an expensive and time-consuming task for many who might like to examine such opportunities. To solve this problem and make both the technical and legal issues behind a hydropower development accessible and understandable to everyone, an expert system named Small Hydropower Advisor (SHA) was developed. Unlike usual expert systems that deal with specific tasks in a domain area, SHA not only involves different required expertise, but also avoids technical terminology (as much as possible) to keep the consultation as simple and understandable as possible to any inexpert user. This paper explains SHA from the application and user perspective.