DESIGN OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE INCINERATOR FOR USE IN SEMI-ARID REGIONS

The paper treats the design of a municipal solid waste incinerator suited to the semiarid regions with northern Nigeria and Niger Republic in West Africa as the study area. Proximate and ultimate analyses results from the solid waste were used as basis for calculations, using standard formulas and correlations. The calorific value of the solid waste samples in the study area is not high enough to sustain an incineration process and it ranges from 5.024 MJ/kg to 5.867 MJ/kg. For these types of low calorific value fuels, the parallel flow concept was found to be the appropriate type of incinerator. The solid waste to be fed in the incinerator needs to be mixed with 50% of supplementary fuel in the form of readily available bagasse to make it up to the required lower calorific value. Major characteristics of the designed municipal solid waste incinerator were: total volume of incinerator chamber: 82.5 m3, length of the incinerator bed: 11m; width of the incinerator bed: 3m and height of the incinerator chamber: 2.5 m, while the suitable adiabatic flame temperature was found to be 1,587 K.