Dioxin removal in “energy from waste plants” - comparison of air pollution control methods

The graph below shows the emitted dioxin - equivalents (Eadon) in grams per year in flue gas from municipal solid waste incinerators with various air pollution control methods for plants of capacity of 200 000 ton municipal solid waste (MSW) per year.

Full-size image (15K)

With optimized combustion and an effective air pollution control system the emissions of dioxins can be kept very low (concentrations below 0.1 ng/m³n).

With a very effective air pollution control system the total emission from all Swedish MSW-incinerators burning approximately 1.5 Mton/year will by 1990 be below 2 g/year - a drastic reduction from approximately 15 g today. As the total dioxin - equivalent emission to the environment in Sweden in the year 1987 was almost 500 g we see that municipal waste incineration really is on the way to solve their dioxin problem.     

Elevated concentrations of mercury in mussels (Mytilus californianus) associated with pinniped colonies

The geographic distribution of mercury concentrations in the California mussel Mytilus californianus, collected from 1977–1978 at 43 sites along the western coastline of the continental United States is marked by consistently elevated levels at two locations. These two sites, which are relatively isolated from anthropogenic inputs and mercuryrich minerals, both contain large pinniped and marine bird populations. The relatively elevated mercury levels measured in the excrement of a pinniped from one of those locales indicate that the concentrated discharge of mercuryrich waste products from the marine ecosystem's top carnivores is contaminating lower trophic levels.     

The effects of component dimensions on heat transfer and pressure loss in shell and tube heat exchangers

In this study, the effects of geometric properties such as baffle spacing, baffle cut, sealing strips, gaps between heat exchanger components, number of tubes and tube passes have been investigated for shell and tube heat exchangers (STHE). For this purpose, geometrical dimensions and data of a specific heat exchanger (HE) used in an industrial application have been obtained. The HTRI Xchanger Suite Educational software was utilized to analyze the reference HE, to verify the results of the software and the output temperatures of the fluids, the shell side heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and the pressure loss (PL) values were compared with the experimental data. After confirming that the results of the software were within the acceptable deviation values, the geometric dimensions of the reference design were changed and new analyzes were carried out to examine the effects of several dimension options on the performance of STHE. Results were discussed in a detailed and comprehensive manner via curves.