Program Manager: Ms. Khine Latt (STO)
U.S. military land-based operations of the future are intended to be self-sustaining and must minimize long logistics tails. Units engaged in stationary field operations generate substantial quantities of solid waste in the form of packaging materials. Personnel, fuel, and critical transport equipment are needed to support the removal and disposal of these large volumes of packaging waste. The quantities involved today (estimated to be more than 7 pounds/day/soldier) can potentially overwhelm the capacity of foreign nations’ waste disposal systems and create security issues. Reduction of packaging waste through reduction of packaging use is not likely to be attainable at any significant level due to health, security, and operation requirements. Alternative solutions
are required.
Plastic packaging has energy content that can approach that of diesel fuel. Diesel fuel has lower heating value of 43.9MJ/kg and hydrogen content of 12.5 weight percent. Plastic heating values can range from 26-43MJ/kg with a hydrogen content of 5−14 percent. If energy content of the waste is optimized for secondary use as a fuel source, at today’s level of packaging being discarded, a military unit could achieve well more than 100-percent self-sufficiency for their generator fuel needs.
The goal of the Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy Recovery (MISER) Program is to explore the possibility of achieving nearly complete packaging waste reduction while harnessing 90 percent of the packaging energy content for use in electricity generation. The challenge is to develop a technology that can efficiently harness the energy content of a mixed plastic/paper/food packaging waste stream in the field and do so in a timely manner. Successful development of a MISER unit would increase the availability of power when needed in the field while simultaneously zeroing the logistics waste footprint.
Program accomplishments include―
- Successful demonstration of a 5kWelec pilot plant using a Super-Critical Water Depolymerization (SCW-DP) approach.
- SCW-DP design developed to improve energy capture to 90 percent on a mixed plastics/paper/food-waste input stream and to scale up the system to 60kWelec.
- Synthesis route developed to convert agricultural waste into a polymer suitable for packaging material that can then be easily “recycled” in the field into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.
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