Combustible gas production from sewage sludge with a downdraft gasifier

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adnan Midilli ◽  
Murat Dogru ◽  
Colin R. Howarth ◽  
Mike J. Ling ◽  
Teoman Ayhan
2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Peregrina ◽  
J. M. Audic ◽  
P. Dauthuille

Assimilate sludge to a fuel is not new. Sludge incineration and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) engines powered with sludge-derived anaerobic digestion gas (ADG) are operations widely used. However, they have a room of improvement to reach simultaneously a positive net power generation and a significant level of waste reduction and stabilization. Gasification has been used in other realms for the conversion of any negative-value carbon-based materials, that would otherwise be disposed as waste, to a gaseous product with a usable heating value for power generation . In fact, the produced gas, the so-called synthetic gas (or syngas), could be suitable for combined heat and power motors. Within this framework gasification could be seen as an optimum alternative for the sludge management that would allow the highest waste reduction yield (similar to incineration) with a high power generation. Although gasification remains a promising route for sewage sludge valorisation, campaigns of measurements show that is not a simple operation and there are still several technical issues to resolve before that gasification was considered to be fully applied in the sludge management. Fluidised bed was chosen by certain technology developers because it is an easy and well known process for solid combustion, and very suitable for non-conventional fuels. However, our tests showed a poor reliable process for gasification of sludge giving a low quality gas production with a significant amount of tars to be treated. The cleaning system that was proposed shows a very limited removal performance and difficulties to be operated. Within the sizes of more common WWTP, an alternative solution to the fluidised bed reactor would be the downdraft bed gasifier that was also audited. Most relevant data of this audit suggest that the technology is more adapted to the idea of sludge gasification presented in the beginning of this paper where a maximum waste reduction is achieved with a great electricity generation thanks to the use of a “good” quality syngas in a CHP engine. Audit show also that there is still some work to do in order to push sludge gasification to a more industrial stage. Regardless what solution would be preferred, the resulting gasification system would involve a more complex scenario compared to Anaerobic Digestion and Incineration, characterised by a thermal dryer and gasifier with a complete gas cleaning system. At the end, economics, reliability and mass and energy yields should be carefully analysed in order to set the place that gasification would play in the forthcoming processing of sewage sludge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 579
Author(s):  
Max Schmid ◽  
Selina Hafner ◽  
Günter Scheffknecht

The conversion of biogenic residues to fuels and chemicals via gasification and synthesis processes is a promising pathway to replace fossil carbon. In this study, the focus is set on sewage sludge gasification for syngas production. Experiments were carried out in a 20 kW fuel input bubbling fluidized bed facility with steam and oxygen as gasification agent. In-situ produced sewage sludge ash was used as bed material. The sensitivity of the key operation parameters gasifier temperature, oxygen ratio, steam to carbon ratio, and the space velocity on the syngas composition (H2, CO, CO2, CH4, CxHy, H2S, COS, NH3, and tars) was determined. The results show that the produced syngas has high H2 and CO concentrations of up to 0.37 m3 m−3 and 0.18 m3 m−3, respectively, and is thus suitable for synthesis of fuels and chemicals. By adjusting the steam to carbon ratio, the syngas’ H2 to CO ratio can be purposely tailored by the water gas shift reaction for various synthesis products, e.g., synthetic natural gas (H2/CO = 3) or Fischer–Tropsch products (H2/CO = 2). Also, the composition and yields of fly ash and bed ash are presented. Through the gasification process, the cadmium and mercury contents of the bed ash were drastically reduced. The ash is suitable as secondary raw material for phosphorous or phosphate fertilizer production. Overall, a broad database was generated that can be used for process simulation and process design.


Author(s):  
Di Yang ◽  
Qiang Xie ◽  
Xinqian Shu ◽  
Yiman Jia ◽  
Jinwei Jia ◽  
...  

2002 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 199-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bolzonella ◽  
L. Innocenti ◽  
F. Cecchi

The paper deals with the performances of the mesophilic anaerobic digestion treatment of sewage sludge from a full scale BNR process without primary settling (nominally 300,000 PE). A relation between the activated sludge observed yields, Yobs, and the anaerobic digester performance was preliminarily found: for values of Yobs of 0.25 kgVSS/kgCOD the anaerobic digester specific gas production showed the best performances (0.22 m3/kgVSfed). This has to be confirmed with wider future studies. It was also shown the level of sludge pre-thickening to be reached for the self-sustaining warming of the digester also in wintertime. According to the energetic balance and to a comparison with an aerobic stabilisation process, it was pointed out as when a co-generation unit for heat and energy production was introduced about 3.4 kWh/PE y of energy were produced in the anaerobic digestion process. On the other hand, 4.3 kWh/PE y were spent if an aerobic stabilisation process was applied. The economic assessment, carried out on the basis of the energy balances, showed that the anaerobic digestion is always economically advantageous if compared to aerobic stabilisation processes, also for small WWTPs. According to the energetic evaluations an environmental balance was assessed, in terms of CO2 emissions. The difference between anaerobic and aerobic processes was about 5.3 kgCO2/PE y in favour of anaerobic processes application.


1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 265-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Augenstein ◽  
Donald L. Wise ◽  
Nghiem Xuan Dat ◽  
Nguyen Duc Khien

2013 ◽  
Vol 726-731 ◽  
pp. 1239-1244
Author(s):  
Chun Ping Li

A series of gasification experiments of sludge RDF was made by using independently developed gasification device. When sludge RDF was gasified at 300°C ~900°C, the trend of gas production was increased continuously with the peak of 65.5% at 900°C and the trend of bottom ash decreased continuously with the peak of 25.6% at 900°C, but tar yield firstly increased and then decreased, reaching maximum at 600 °C, about 31%. With the increase of the gasification temperature, combustible gas content of CO2 decreased significantly, while H2 , CO and CH4 increased. At 500 °C, heavy metal of Hg entirely evaporated into the atmosphere, volatile peak of Pb, Cd, As, Cu was in 800°C, volatile sort of 8 heavy metals was : Hg>Pb>Cd> As>Zn>Cu>Cr>Ni. The optimal gasification temperature for sludge RDF is 700 °C when the volatilization rate of heavy metals was moderate, gas production was higher and tar produced was smaller.


2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (11) ◽  
pp. 2527-2533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoki Abe ◽  
Yue-Qin Tang ◽  
Makoto Iwamura ◽  
Shigeru Morimura ◽  
Kenji Kida

The influence of two pretreatment methods, thermal treatment and low-pressure wet oxidation, on the sludge digestion efficiency was examined. Batch thermophilic anaerobic digestion was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the pretreatment methods in terms of volatile suspended solids (VSS) digestion efficiency and gas production. The results showed that the gas production was not proportional to the VSS degradation efficiency of either thermal treatment or low-pressure wet oxidation. Low-pressure wet oxidation treatment at 150 °C along with 40% of the theoretical oxygen required to oxidize organic carbon gave the highest gas production and the VSS digestion efficiency of 77% at a VSS loading rate of 8 g l−1 d−1. The digestion efficiency was about 30% higher than that of thermophilic anaerobic digestion without sludge pretreatment. Sewage sludge could be treated effectively at a high VSS digestion efficiency with this pretreatment followed by thermophilic anaerobic digestion.


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