Polyfunctional Plants for Industrial Waste Disposal-Part I: Process and Equipment Design

This article is the first of two papers dealing with development of a design and costing procedure for polyfunctional waste treatment plants. Part I reviews equipment sizing aspects. Part II defines and validates the cost estimation procedure. In this article, the structure of a general purpose polyfunctional plant for liquid and solid industrial waste treatment is discussed, highlighting the high level of process integration obtainable and the consequent benefits. The plant comprises an incineration section, a section for chemical/physical/biological treatments, and a stabilization/solidification section. Each section is briefly described, and an overview of the sizing procedure for main equipment is presented. Such a procedure forms the basis of a computer model for process and equipment preliminary design to be used in economic feasibility evaluation studies.