City Waste Water May Aid Industrial Waste Heat
Can the waste water of cities be
used to dissipate the waste heat
of industry?
The idea will be given its first
test this summer at The Penn
sylvania State University on
fields soaked with sewage.
The project is supported by the
NSF’S RANN program:
Reasearch Applied to National
Needs.
The need is national-and it’s
urgent- every year a vast
quantity of water is used to carry
off the heat generated by the
steel, basic manufacturing, and,
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above all, electric power in
dustires.
As more nuclear power
reactors go on-line that quantity
will be greatly increased.
Dumped into rivers, at tem
peratures near 100 degrees F, it
constitutes a “thermal load”
capable of causing ecological
havoc.
Passed through wet cooling
towers, it can affect the weather,
enhancing the formation of fog or
clouds.
Penn State scientists and
engineers will test the feasibility
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of pumping such effluent through
pipes that are buried in moist
soil. The principle involved is
familiar to any parent who has
even tried to reduce a child’s
fever by putting a wet towel on
his forehead.
The moist soil will hopefully act
like that wet towel; it will pull the
heat out of the pipes to the sur
face, where it will be "dissipated
in the atmosphere.
Two kindred experiments are
under way in Oregon and North
Carolina. There, however, the
soil has to be soaked for the
purpose.
The essence of the Penn State
experiment is to use soil that is
already being moistened for
another purpose, m this case, to
purify waste water.
Spray irrigation of sewage has
been under investigation at the
University for over ten years in a
project that has been dubbed the
Living Filter. It makes available
a round-the-clock, round-the-year
supply of moist soil.
If the new spin-off proves out, it
would enable cities to solve two
serious waste-disposal problems
at one stroke.
It could also extend the
growing season for consumer
crops or animal feed all over the
northern U.S and even into
Canada
“A city of a million people,”
says project co-ordinator Dr.
Dave DeWalle, of the School of
Forest Resources, “would
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require about 7500 acres to cool
the water from its power plants
alone. At least, this is our
preliminary estimate. One
purpose of the field test is to
verify that figure.”
DeWalle acknowledges that
7500 acres is “a lot of land.
However, spray irrigation
systems now in the planning
stages for Chicago and Muskegon
County, for example, will make
use of even larger acreages.”
A network of plastic piping is
now being set up in a small plot
on the Penn State farms. The
pipes are being buried one foot
deep in rows that are two feet
apart.
Water heated to the tem
perature of coolant discharged
from a typical electric power
plant will be forced through the
system.
“If that water comes back to
the network head 20 degrees
cooler than it went out,” says
DeWalle, “and if there are no
serious effects to soil, crops,
wildlife, the air, or man, we will
have demonstrated that the
technique is feasible.”
At the same time a computer
analysis will be made of the
economics of a full-scale system.
If the experiment is conducted
with the thoroughness that has
characterized the parent project,
the results should be highly
dependable. For the Living
Filter, sometimes known as the
“granddaddy of spray irrigation
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experiments,” is serving as a
model for actual installations
now being planned in many parts
of the world.
Associated with Dr. DeWalle on
the project is an interdisciplinary
team composed of Drs. Louis
Kardos, Daniel D. Fritton and
Guy W. McKee, with the
Department of Agronomy; Drs.
Archibald J. McDonnell and
Thomas Rachford, Department
of Civil Engineering; Prof. M. L.
Schultz and Dr. Warren F.
Witzig, Nuclear Engineering;
and Dr. J. D. Martsolf, Depart
ment of Horticulture.
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