|
August 2006
Welcome to The CTMA
Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about
the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program.
The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for
Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative
technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and
repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves
as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of
interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and
solicit your input. Feel free to
submit items for the
newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More
information about the program can be found at
http://ctma.ncms.org/. To
subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to
listserv@listserv.ncms.org with "subscribe CTMANewsletter" or
"unsubscribe CTMANewsletter" in the message body.
Save the Date
2007 CTMA SYMPOSIUM
Solutions Round-up
El Tropicano River Walk Hotel
San Antonio, Texas
March 26, - 29, 2007
2006 DoD Maintenance Symposium &
Exhibition
Plan to attend the 2006 DoD Maintenance
Symposium & Exhibition to be held 23 – 26 October 2006 in Reno,
Nevada. Scheduled at the Grand Sierra Resort, the Symposium is
focused on maintenance of military weapon systems and equipment and
is a great complement to the CTMA Symposium. The theme of the 2006
Symposium is “Maintenance: Key Leverage Point in DoD’s Materiel
Readiness Value Chain.” This year’s event will emphasize
understanding the End-to-End Value Chain as a way to transform
Defense Maintenance into an increasingly responsive organization.
Registration, hotel reservations, and agendas are found at
www.sae.org/dod.
We welcome the following
new member companies into NCMS and the CTMA program:
GKN
Aerospace (www.aerospace.gknplc.com)
GKN
Aerospace is a global first tier
supplier of structures,
components, assemblies and
engineering services to aircraft
and aero engine manufacturers.
They possess expertise in all
specialist aerospace
manufacturing and design
processes in addition to supply
chain and logistics capability.
Rockwell Automation
(www.rockwellautomation.com)
Rockwell
Automation specializes in
industrial controls, switchgear
and motors.
|
Recently
Completed
Project:
Air Pollution Control
System Improvements
Painting operations release large quantities of
solvent vapors into the atmosphere.
Painting operations
can constitute a facility’s single biggest
environmental impact, with the greatest associated
environmental compliance costs. For decades, the
air pollution control method of choice for volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) has been to burn them,
ideally converting them to carbon dioxide and water.
Incineration units (generally called “thermal
oxidizers”) require significant quantities of fuel,
typically natural gas, to maintain the required
combustion temperature. According to an
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) document from
1989, the annual fuel cost to operate typical
thermal oxidation units ranged between $63,400 per
year (for a catalytic unit with heat recovery) to
$264,500 per year (for a non-catalytic unit) for a
relatively modest-sized system (20,000 cubic feet
per minute – cfm). Since one can expect the price of
natural gas to be about four times what it was in
1989, one can multiply these costs by a factor of
four.
Alternatives to thermal oxidation have been
under development for many
years. In particular, using biological
processes rather than incineration for VOC
destruction has long been recognized as one of the
most potentially advantageous approaches. Energy
requirements for biological reactors are minuscule
compared to thermal oxidizers. In addition,
biological destruction is a well established
technology for wastewater treatment. The main
challenge in using biological destruction for air
pollution control for painting operations is the
fact that exhaust streams from paint lines generally
involve high volumes of air, and low concentrations
of VOCs. As a result, biological treatment units
must either be very large, or must work very
efficiently.
This project developed a fundamentally new
biological design, from initial concept to a pilot
model tested on an operating paint line at the
Barstow facility. The completed pilot system was
shipped to the Barstow facility and installed on
their paint line.
As an indicator of the
capacity requirements of a typical DoD paint
facility, a new installation at Barstow, with a
common air system serving multiple paint lines,
operates at a total capacity of 170,000 CFM. For air
pollution control, it uses a thermal oxidation
system with a preconcentrator. Preconcentrators can
generally reduce the volume of air delivered to a
thermal oxidizer by a factor of about five to 10, so
a thermal oxidizer with a capacity of 20,000 cfm may
be sufficient for a system of that size. Using the
EPA figures quoted above, the annual fuel costs to
operate a system of that type would be expected to
range between $250,000 to $1,000,000. A biological
system would be expected to operate at 25% of the
cost of a thermal oxidizer, saving up to $750,000
per year.NCMS contact
is Paul Chalmer,
paulc@ncms.org, 734-995-4911
|
|
|
Participants needed on New
Project Ideas: Submit and view project ideas at
http://ctmaideas.ncms.org. Add
your comments to new project ideas and indicate your interest in helping to
define and participate in the project.
We appreciate your feedback.
Please contact
Chuck Ryan
with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you
in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of
Defense; the content of this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the
position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be
inferred. |
