Click to purchaseWaste To Energy Conversion Technology:
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About the Book:
From the Foreword:
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"Albert Einstein observed that ‘scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been.’ The history of waste to energy (WTE) is a long story of learning, experimenting and evolution. The chapters in this book tell this story from many different points of view. Engineers have been working on the recovery of the energy in wastes from the time that steam engines for power and electric generation were first in operation in the late 1800s. The first ‘destructor’ in England, built in Manchester in 1876, was reported to be operating 30 years later.

Joseph G. Branch, the chairman of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), self- published a comprehensive book on the subject of ‘waste to energy’ in 1906. In this he tabulated the waste generated at the time, and over 100 British and foreign municipal incinerators using typically over 30 tons per day waste for lighting and power uses. He described the power plant built under the new Williamsburg Bridge, to burn New York City waste. At that time waste was carried by horse- carts mostly to be dumped in the rivers. Some carts burned the trash on the way!

After 1906, only a few public WTE plants were built. As internal combustion engines replaced the horses, trucks that were used to haul the waste to landfi ll or to dump it in the river; much of land areas of Manhattan and other boroughs were expanded by fi lling with the high- ash-containing trash. After about 1950, as land became more expensive, and population blossomed, local governments began to hire engineers to build refractory chambers to burn the waste, and even wash down the smoke somewhat.

A group of ASME members, as the Incinerator Division, published standards for refractory incinerators to destroy infectious medical waste in 1961. In 1966 the ASME Incinerator Committee was formed ‘to bring together the foremost authorities in the field of refuse incineration for an exchange of knowledge, experiences and expectations’. This group of engineers was subsequently renamed the Solid Waste Processing Division (SWPD) and is now the Material and Energy Recovery Division of the ASME. The ASME Research Committee on Industrial and Municipal Waste, most recently renamed the ASME Research Committee on Energy Environment and Waste, was organized specifically for research, and to reflect the extension of their activities."

More books that Tom McGowan contributed to:

Biomass and Alternate Fuel Systems:
An Engineering and Economic Guide
Perry's Chemical Engineer's Handbook:
7th edition, 1997 and 8th edition, 2007 McGraw Hill, NY.
Standard Handbook of Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal,
2nd edition, McGraw Hill, NY 1997.

Suggested Reading in Combustion, and air pollution control:
North American Combustion Handbook Vol 1 and 2, B&W Steam book,
Introduction to Hazardous Waste Incineration,
2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2001.

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