Experience

Drying / Thermal Desorption - Whitney’s experience includes design, build and operation of rotary kilns, screw processors and the associated peripheral equipment.  His experience base covers all aspects of process development, equipment design, specification, application, startup, optimization, repair and rebuild of rotary kilns and screw processors for drying, devolatizing and pyrolizing applications.

Experience with specific feedstocks and processes:

• Drying mechanically dewatered biosolids sludge, including materials that contain, FOG, septage and primary sludge that can adhere to the heat exchange surfaces.

• Recycling of drilling fluids by devolatizing drill cuttings to extract the oil from the solids.

• The devolatization of hydrocarbon containing RCRA waste, consisting of the shredded whole stream: shredded drums, small containers, cardboard, plastics, rags, wood, adsorbents and hydrocarbons of all types. The condensing systems substantially separated the lower boiling solvents, water, higher boiling hydrocarbons and oils.  Refinements to the system including inerting and controls resulted in a large scale, safe, 90% uptime operation.

• The indirectly heated anaerobic devolatization of soils and refinery wastes for delisting. Non-detect for hydrocarbons has been achieved at discharge temperatures in the 800F to 950F range.

• Precipitated minerals cake drying in hydrometallurgy.

• Thermal processing of high purity, inorganic chemicals.

• Indirect and direct drying of agriculture and woody biomass.

Experience with dryer and thermal desorption system peripheral equipment:

• Utility systems for thermal fluid or electric heating

• Feeding and material handling systems

• Cooling systems

• Off take and material handling systems

• Non-condensable gas management

• Inert gas supply and management

• Condenser systems, including automatic in line cleaning

• Instrumentation and automated control of the complete system

Gasification – Mr. Whitney has consulted on several gasification projects including as owners’ engineer and consulting with Fluor Daniels on various gasification technology projects worldwide.  Key projects include a proposed 200 million RCRA waste gasification project in which Whitney is an inventor of the process.

Additional Project Experience Information:

• Independent Stave Co, Lebanon, MO: Designed, built and commissioned a 9mm Btu/h woody biomass gasifier and a similar gasifier of 25mm Btu/h for another client.

• Producers Rice Mill, Stuttgart, AR: Various equipment designs for ash cooling and stripping, feedstock and product evaluations with industrial scale rice hull gasifiers.

• Rineco, Owner’s Engineer: Fluor Daniel Inc. European and Japanese gasification and syngas application technology evaluation. Specific oxygen blown gasifier designs for metal containing mixed waste stream gasification with emphasis on feed systems, gas clean up and utilization, ash cooling and handling. (400mm Btu/h capacity)

• Rineco: Complete design of air blown dry bottom gasification and syngas utilization plant for shredded solid RCRA feedstock through synthesis and finished product production. (200mmBtu/h capacity)

• Max West Energy, Sanford, FL: Startup of fluidized bed gasifier for dried wastewater biosolids to clean energy.

Incineration – Whitney’s experience in incineration processes includes the design, build and commissioning of incineration systems.    Whitney worked on all aspects of equipment design and commissioning in the first PCB incinerator in the US.  Whitney is also the inventor of proprietary burners, controls and feed systems for secondary fuels for cement kilns.  

Equipment design, redesign, rebuild and repair experience:

Over twenty five years experience in industrial technology conceptualizing equipment for an application, leading the specific design, modification, rebuild and repair to ensure productivity where there were no existing practical off the shelf solutions. This is whole plant process and equipment technology, application and operation.

Equipment Design

• Ash and feed stock material handling systems

• Solid and liquid fuel processing with shredders

• Hydropulpers

• Automatic bucket fillers

• Barrel burners

• Drum crushers

• Cryogenic metal processors

• Laboratory equipment

• Pipeline grinders

• Magnetic separators

• Cement kiln burners for secondary fuels with entrained solids

• Pumping systems for abrasive solid fuels

• Inerting and padding systems

• Containment systems

• Fire detection and control systems

• Thermal desorbsion units with pyrolysis

• Highway tanker trailers and unloading system

• Particle sizing equipment

• Feeders

• Specialized conveyors

• Various other novel equipment developed or modified as necessary to safely process nearly all types of hydrocarbon containing waste.