Design engineers are a different lot. They are more like a Research team. They work hard to unravel the mysteries of combustion engineering and painstakingly design every nut and bolt. The difference between the two though is that a research team may have unlimited time at their disposal, whereas a design team has to perform within a very limited time period.

When a new project for an incinerator system is on the drawing board, they not only have to be 100% involved in its design, they should ensure that bottlenecks, if any, during production, are handled with aplomb. They will have to dig into their experience and calculations before sitting in front of the computer. They should show lot of imagination and inventiveness in their job.

The design engineer has also to interact constantly with the Project, Production and QC teams. For example, while designing the incinerator combustion chamber and scrubber, they should have at their fingertips all the required data, such as calorific value of the waste, volume of the flue gas generated, the pressure drop and temperature drop across the board and so on, in order to size the chamber, scrubber, ducting, chimney etc.

Similarly, let us say the combustion chamber pressure is required to be -20 mmWC, they have to check the air flow from the fan, the pressure of the air, the design of the entry point to the ejector and so on. This calls for not only designing all these, but making sure the production team does its work properly, the project team giving the inputs and the QC team ensuring compliance to the quality of work. They have to be on the shop floor, interacting with various teams to make their design a success.

They will come across challenges which can only be solved, not just by theory but also by practical application. To achieve the desired results, it is not enough to prepare the drawings but to get fully involved in the incinerator’s production and quality.

The amount of satisfaction one gets after an incinerator project is completed successfully is something to be experienced.