Solid waste/oll shale combustlon. An environmentally benign plant

Abstract

The co-combustion of oil shale and Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) in a fluidized bed provides relatively clean stack gas. It is believed that the need for expensive clean-up equipment is therefore eliminated. The fluidized bed boiler of this cogeneration plant is to be fueled by roughly 75 percent RDF and 25 percent oil shale. The resulting ash will have cement-like properties likely making it suitable for the manufacture of some construction materials or simply mixed with water and placed in a landfill where the mixture would form a concrete mass to seal in any environmentally hazardous chemicals that may be present in RDF ash. Several mass burn plants in the United States use municipal solid wastes as fuel. Several dozen more will be operational within the next few years. In order to meet air quality requirements, these plants (as well as most coal-fired power plants) require expensive pollution control equipment. It has been amply demonstrated that fluidized bed combustors are an effective option for coal-fired power plants. In such plants, crushed limestone in the fluidized bed absorbs sulfur compounds, obviating the need for much of the expensive stack gas clean-up equipment that coal-fired power plants normally require. Major oil companiesmore » have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to economically use the huge energy reserves contained in US oil shale deposits. However, after many years of research and development, they have been unable to utilize this energy directly.« less