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Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
PO BOX 1031
Mesquite, TX 75150

August 2, 1990

Courtesy of NASA BBS at 205 895-0028

ELECTROSTATIC PRECIPITATORS

Started in 1980, Project Recoup was a program for applying
advanced technology to the solution of a problem shared by a growing
number of U.S. communities: how to dispose of refuse in areas where
acceptable landfill sites are scarce.

Jointly sponsored by Langley Research Center, Langley Air Force
Base and the adjoining City of Hampton, Virginia, the program
involved development of a Refuse-fired Steam Generating Facility
that incinerates trash, reduces it to a readily-disposable ash, and
employs the heat of trash burning to create steam for practical use
at Langley Research Center.

A design base for modeling similar projects elsewhere, the
facility has proved eminently successful. It disposes of all solid
waste from the NASA center, the Air Force Base, and other government
installations in the area, and it also accommodates about 70 percent
of Hampton's municipal waste.

Hampton, principal financier for the project, realizes revenue
from trash disposal fees and from the sale of steam to Langley
Research Center. And there is an energy conservation bonus in that
the steam generated by burning waste cuts the amount of fuel
normally used by Langley by some two million gallons a year.

The project produced another bonus that has largely escaped
notice: an air pollution equipment control device, developed of
necessity in the course of the program, that is now commercially
available.

The device is an advanced electronic control for electrostatic
precipitators, widely used in pollution control applications
throughout industry. It is built by Kinetic Controls, Inc., Newport
News, Virginia, a company formed by two NASA/Langley employees--T.K.
Lusby, Jr. and David F. Johnston--who developed the control as their
contribution to Project Recoup, working for the most part on
personal time and with private funds.





The function of an electrostatic precipitator is to remove
particulate matter from the combustion gas created by the burning of
a fuel before the gas is expelled through a smokestack.

When standard fuels are burned, the smoke is of relatively
constant composition and the highest practical voltage is fairly
constant; once the voltage is set, as long as the same type of fuel
is used, only small changes in precipitation voltage are needed.

But when refuse is used as a fuel, the composition of the smoke
changes continually and that requires corresponding changes in
voltage over a very wide range.

To insure minimal pollution of the atmosphere, the two
NASA/Langley employees undertook to develop an innovative,
microprocessor-based control that automatically senses and
compensates for the changes in smoke composition by adjusting the
precipitator's voltage and current to permit maximum particle
collection.

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Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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