M.S. Thesis: Technical and Environmental Comparison of Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) and Moving Grate Reactors
By Olivier Morin
Advisor: Professor Nickolas J. Themelis
Co-Advisors: Professor Qunxing Huang (Zhejiang University) and Vasilis Fthenakis (Columbia University)
Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering
Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science
Columbia University
October 7, 2014
The subject of this thesis is the combustion of municipal solid waste (MSW) in waste-to-energy (WTE) power plants. In particular, it compares the two principal WTE technologies used in China: Moving Grate (MG) and Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) reactors. Following a description of these technologies in the first part of the thesis, the second part is dedicated to comparing the advantages and potential drawbacks of the newer CFB technology, relatively to the older and widely used MG technology, by using data obtained from the literature, industrial sources, and obtained during a summer internship of the author at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China.