Gasification system aims for energy efficient, environmentally safer trash disposal

  • Published
  • By Mekka Parish
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Efforts are underway at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center to develop a more energy efficient, environmentally friendly technology for eliminating solid waste at expeditionary locations.  The current solution developed to address these issues is a gasification system. 

"Recent regulations have eliminated open pit burning to dispose of municipal solid wastes at deployed locations," said Rod Fisher, expeditionary modernization engineer at AFCEC.  "We need technology that is environmentally compliant and energy efficient to get rid of waste."

Testing was recently completed at the AFCEC Research and Testing facility at Tyndall on the new gasification system prototype.  In addition to having the capacity to deploy quickly with minimal manpower and using currently available handling equipment, the system is also easy to maintain and operate, Fisher said.

The system works by gasifying waste and results in syngas and an inert ash that can be disposed of in a land fill. Currently, the system burns up to 2.5 tons of trash a day.  At optimal levels, the system is capable of burning up to six tons of trash daily and uses less power than current incinerators or open pit burning, according to the development team.

"It has a little less oxygen than normally required to burn stuff," said Bobby Diltz, AFCEC requirements engineer.  "The system will burn trash and create a gas with the energy needed to combust and create heat to dry the trash.  The hope is we can reduce the footprint that's normally required to eliminate garbage."

Users also don't have to sort waste prior to inserting it into the chamber, the engineers said.  

A unique feature of this gasification system is that it's truly deployable, said Dr. Heather Luckarift, contract lead for Universal Technology Corporation, a company assisting with the development of the system.

"To be able to make (the system) containerized and portable is something of a technological challenge," Luckarift said.  "So it is nice to see something of this scale where they have tried to address the limitations of size, weight and how it would work on a military base."

The next phase of prototype development will add additional combustion chambers and provide the capability to recover waste heat from combustion of the syngas to dry and pre-stage the next combustion chamber.  This will further reduce the fuel required and combustion time, allowing the gasification system to operate on a 24-hour cycle in a "continuous batch" mode.

The Advanced Power Technology Office within the Air Force Research Lab at Wright Patterson Air Force Base also assisted with this project.