Ash melting furnace
AssigneeIshikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd.
InventorsMinoru Fukusaki, Hitoshi Hagihara, Satoshi Inoue
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The ash melting furnace disposes the combustion ash resulted from incineration of municipal or other sorts of waste by melting it utilizing as the main fuel the unburnt carbon contained in the ash itself. The ash melting furnace includes a stationary plasma torch which uses air for the working gas, and which is so placed facing the combustion ash heaped up within the furnace as to project its hot gas jet thereon. The furnace further includes a torch unit controller that actuates the plasma torch to secondarily heat and melt the ash.
Claims8
An apparatus for disposing wastes, comprising:
- a furnace for incinerating the wastes, wherein ash is formed upon incineration of the wastes and unburnt carbon is formed upon an incomplete burning of said wastes, the furnace having a hearth;
- means for melting the ash into a slag with unburnt carbon, where the unburnt carbon remains with the ash after the incineration by the furnace, the unburnt carbon being used as a fuel to melt the ash;
- and,
- a plasma torch directed onto the ash in the furnace and a controller module for actuating the plasma torch,
- the controller module including
- (1) a molten state detector for determining the state of the ash being melted and generating detection data;
- and
- (2) a torch controller connected with the molten state detector for actuating the plasma torch in accordance with the detection data sent from the molten state detector.
A method of disposing wastes in a furnace, comprising the steps of:
- A) incinerating the wastes in the furnace wherein ash is produced by the incineration and a certain amount of unburnt carbon is formed upon an incomplete burning of the wastes:
- B) melting the ash into a slag using the unburnt carbon remaining in the ash;
- C) determining the melting state of the ash being melted;
- and
- D) injecting hot air into the ash when the ash melting state is unstable.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.