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THERMAL TREATMENT AND PREPROCESSING AND POSTPROCESSING OPERATIONS 94 5 Thermal Treatment and Preprocessing and Postprocessing Operations Technology often means different things to different people. The Army's current baseline program uses what is often called incineration technology. When used in this general sense, technology refers to a system with component elements or steps that are referred to as processes or unit operations. The baseline incineration technology system includes such processes as combustion and flue gas cleanup and, as parts of these processes, such unit operations as liquid storage, liquid pumping, air compression, agent and fuel atomization, combustion, flue gas cooling by water quenching, flue gas scrubbing with decontaminating fluid (and its recycle or destruction), flue gas dewatering, and gas blowing to carry the effluent gas to the stack. Thus, an evaluation of alternative technology systems must consider first the availability and capabilities of alternative processes and unit operations and then the effectiveness of combining them in an operating technology system. This kind of analysis is especially important in cases where available unit operations will only partially detoxify the chemical agent rather than fully destroy it and where they will convert chemical agent to other organic forms but will not convert all the carbon waste to acceptable wastes, such as CO2, sodium carbonate, or material roughly equivalent to sewage sludge. Chapters 6 and 7 address a number of the principal alternative unit processes and technologies that might be used to destroy chemical agent and energetics and decontaminate metal parts and containers. Chapter 8 considers possible combinations of these elements as potential alternative technology systems. However, before a destruction technology is used, weapons must be prepared for subsequent destruction. For example, munitions must be disassembled to separate agent from propellants and explosives; ton containers must be drained of agent. In addition, the destruction processes result in gas, liquid, and solid waste that must be processed before being released to the environment. This chapter covers some optional processes that might be used at the front end of the system to preprocess feed materials and at the back end of the system to treat, temporarily retain, or further prepare waste streams for
