Last week, Professor, Ye Lynn and myself went to Tampa Florida for the NAWTEC conference hosted by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). We watched many presentations and viewed many of the vendor booths at the conference.

Lynn and I watched Professor present for the first time. His presentation was titled, “Semi-Fluidized Combustion System for Municipal Solid Waste.” Professor focused on explaining the mixing phenomena and size segregation of MSW, explaining his design of a new combustion chamber as well as the discussion of grate system development. Professor also included Lynn’s Solidworks animation of the reverse acting grate as well as Tiffany’s video of the reverse acting grate in action. He also including the video introducing the new reverse acting grate which was shown in previous posts on here.

We also got to see Professor Nakamura’s mentors present as well: Nickolas Themelis from Columbia and Marco Castaldi from City College. Professor Themelis presented on modern problems facing Waste Management. He stated that the two main problems were public acceptance and affordable capital cost. It was noted that most developed countries are generally opposed to waste management and approximately 0.2-0.4% GDP is spent on MSW management.

Professor Castaldi was part of a panel discussion regarding the future of Integrated Industrial Parks as part of a Circular Economy.  He emphasized the importance of researching past case studies recorded in university publications as well as asking input from current college students regardless of their familiarity in the matter.