Physical Size Reduction

Much contaminated debris is incompatible with flail-type windrow aeration equipment used for composting due to its large size. Physical size reduction is an effective option for preparing the debris for compatibility with the windrow equipment. Crushing is a standard method to reduce the particle size of rock materials. The size-reduced debris would be returned to the composting system to reduce the explosives concentrations to the remedial action objective levels. The crushing process will use mechanical size reduction equipment to crush the large debris. 

Three types of commercially available crushing/grinding equipment potentially are applicable to reducing the size of the explosives-contaminated debris  

Jaw crushers for initial crushing of hard or large materials and 

Hammermills to produce controlled particle size and achieve the highest ratio of particle size reduction. 

BatteUe personnel contacted manufacturers and vendors of these types of crushers to determine the applicability of the equipment types to the specific requirements for the explosives-contaminated debris. Toothed-roll crushers would be unable to achieve the required size reduction. This type of equipment was not recommended by the manufacturers and/or vendors. 

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Improved safety, inventory reduction, and plant physical size reduction. Next to reducing energy, achieving safer plants is seen as the most important goal. PI would lead to reduction in inventory, which would once again lead to safer plants. 

The extension of the useful storage life of plant and animal products beyond a few days at room temperature presents a series of complex biochemical, physical, microbial, and economic challenges. Respiratory enzyme systems and other enzymes ia these foods continue to function. Their reaction products can cause off-davors, darkening, and softening. Microbes contaminating the surface of plants or animals can grow ia cell exudates produced by bmises, peeling, or size reduction. Fresh plant and animal tissue can be contaminated by odors, dust, iasects, rodents, and microbes. 

Particle Size Reduction. Changes in the physical characteristics of a biomass feedstock often are requited before it can be used as a fuel. Particle size reduction (qv) is performed to prepare the material for direct fuel use, for fabrication into fuel pellets, or for a conversion process. Particle size of the biomass also is reduced to reduce its storage volume, to transport the material as a slurry or pneumatically, or to faciHtate separation of the components. 

The largest class of processes appHed to farm commodities are separations, which are usually based on some physical property such as density, particle size, or solubiHty. For example, the milling process for cereal grains involves size reduction (qv) foUowed by screening to yield products that have varied concentrations of starch, fiber, and protein. Milling of water slurries is practiced to obtain finer separation of starch, fiber, protein, and oil. 

Various techniques are available to separate the different types of particles that may be present in a sohd mixture. The choice depends on the physicochemical nature of the sohds and on site-specific considerations (for example, wet versus diy methods). A key consideration is the extent of the liberation of the individual particles to be separated. Particles attached to each other obviously cannot be separated by direct mechanical means except after the attachment has been broken. In ore processing, the mineral values are generally liberated by size reduction (see Sec. 20). Rarely is liberation complete at any one size, and a physical-separation flow sheet wih incorporate a sequence of operations that often are designed first to rejec t as much... 

The weathering process which eventually reduces the rock of the parent material to the inorganic constituents of soil comprises both physical and chemical changes. Size reduction from rocks to the colloidal state depends not only upon the mechanical action of natural forces but also on chemical solubilisation of certain minerals, action of plant roots, and the effects of organic substances formed by biological activity. 

Separation processes, as could be seen from Figure 2.1, position themselves at the back end of the sequence in operations in the mineral processing flowsheet. The front-end operations has been found virtually to terminate with the liberation or the size-reduction processes involving crushing and grinding. It is important to limit the amount of size reduction to that at which adequate liberation is accomplished. The term adequacy is related to the cost involved in comminution and to performance of the concentration methods that follows. The concentration is obtained by separation processes which rely on differences in the properties of the particles, the physical and physico-chemical characteristics of minerals. In this context, it will only be relevant to refer to Table 2.5 which presents a summary of the processes along with the properties of the minerals that are exploited. 

To obtain representative samples from nonhomoge-neous sample materials, such as polymer compounds, particle-size reduction techniques need often to be applied (not for film) [50]. Also, for destructive inpolymer additive analysis it is advantageous to change the physical state of solid samples to provide a larger surface area per unit mass. Complete extraction is sometimes achieved only after grinding the sample. Typically, Perlstein [51] has reported recoveries of only 59 % for extraction of Tinuvin 320 from unground PVC after 16 h of Soxhlet extraction with diethyl ether while recoveries rise to 97 % for ground polymer. 

Scans based on resonant ejection may either be carried out in a forward, i.e., from low to high mass, or a reverse manner. This allows for the selective storage of ions of a certain m/z value by elimination of ions below and above that m/z value from the trap. Thus, it can serve for precursor ion selection in tandem MS experminents. [156,158] Axial excitation can also be used to cause collision-induced dissociation (CID) of the ions as a result of numerous low-energy collisions with the helium buffer gas that is present in the trap in order to dampen the ion motion. [150,156] A substantial increase of the mass range is realized by reduction of both the RF frequency of the modulation voltage and the physical size of theQIT. [154,159,160]... 

In the production of materials for use in DPI products, however, the particle size of the crystallized product is normally too large. Subsequent size reduction is necessary which can significantly alter the physical nature of the material [16]. 

Many site-specific characteristics have an impact on vitrification technologies. One critical aspect of any thermal technology is the water content of the waste. Water dilutes feed material, requires energy to drive off, and physically limits the feed rate of waste. Feed preparation is another variable, which differs with the technology and with site-specific characteristics. Some technologies can accept complete barrels of waste at a time, while others require pretreatment and size reduction. Many estimates do not take into account site preparation and waste disposal costs. Only complete treatment life-cycle assessments can provide reliable comparison data, and such studies are, by definition, highly site and waste specific (D18248T, p. 55). 

Particles are generated by the size reduction of bulk materials by engineering-type (physical) manipulation. 

Size reduction followed by physical processes such as magnetic separation or flotation... 

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