A Novel, Cost Effective and Easily Scaled Solution for On-Site Treatment of Oily Wastes

Heat losses in applied smouldering systems: Sensitivity analysis via analytical modelling

“…The choice of model depends, in part, on the key system behaviour. As articulated above, commercial smouldering reactors invariably exhibit expanding cooling zones [9][10][11]19].…”

“…However, smouldering (sometimes called filtration combustion [5][6][7][8]) is also being used as an engineering tool across various disciplines to address a wide range of challenges. It is clear from applications such as brownfield site remediation [9][10][11][12][13], energy conversion [5,14], wastewater sludge treatment [15,16], waste processing and resource recovery [6,17], and sanitation in the developing world [18], that smouldering is emerging as a simple, economical, and robust technology. Many smouldering applications are implemented with large scale commercial systems, e.g., batch reactors for treating stockpiled hazardous waste [9][10][11]19].…”

“…It is clear from applications such as brownfield site remediation [9][10][11][12][13], energy conversion [5,14], wastewater sludge treatment [15,16], waste processing and resource recovery [6,17], and sanitation in the developing world [18], that smouldering is emerging as a simple, economical, and robust technology. Many smouldering applications are implemented with large scale commercial systems, e.g., batch reactors for treating stockpiled hazardous waste [9][10][11]19]. These sizes are increasing as the technology develops, where some systems can exhibit an effective radius of 6 m and treat upwards of 34 tonnes of material per day [20].…”

Scaling up self-sustained smouldering of sewage sludge for waste-to-energy

“…Smouldering combustion is emerging as a viable waste-to-energy approach (Gianfelice et al, 2019;Serrano et al, 2020;Wyn et al, 2020;. Across disciplines, smouldering is being used for environmentally beneficial purposes: to treat stockpiles of hazardous organic waste (Thomas et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2021), clean contaminated land (Grant et al, 2016;Vidonish et al, 2016), provide off-grid solutions for sanitation challenges (Saberi et al, 2020;Somorin, 2020;, and recover resources from a variety of waste streams (Feng et al, 2020;Manelis et al, 2016;Wyn et al, 2020).…”

“…Engineers are scaling up applied smouldering systems out of the laboratory to solve challenging environmental problems, primarily for land remediation and hazardous waste management (e.g., (Gerhard et al, 2020;Sabadell et al, 2019;Sabadell et al, 2018;Scholes et al, 2015;Solinger et al, 2020;Thomas et al, 2020)). However, like all novel technologies, there are new, previously unforeseen phenomena that emerge through scaling up.…”