Shipboard Waste Volume Reduction and Treatment

The US Navy is seeking ways to treat typical ship-generated waste to minimize storage space required for waste storage during long-term deployments, with a special emphasis on the large items produced during cargo and ordinance handling. The best way to do this is to treat the waste as a resource, reducing its volume and producing useful energy or fuel from the waste decomposition process. Rather than incineration, which produces nothing of value, Adherent Technologies, Inc. (ATI) is proposing to extend its novel tertiary recycling process for plastics to the treatment of mixed shipboard waste. In this process, solid organic materials are converted into volatile compounds that can be used as gaseous or liquid fuel while the remaining solids are highly condensed and usually sterile and odor free, allowing for long-term storage and easy disposal. The process is closed and does not need emission controls. ATI will use their experience in treating diverse waste materials for the recovery of valuable components to design a modular unit to reduce the volume of shipboard waste and generate usable products from the waste.