Gasification is an attractive technology for waste thermal treatment. The successful design and modelling of a gasifier requires reliable kinetic data. The purpose of this work is to study the steam gasification kinetics of chars produced by municipal wastes pyrolysis. The municipal solid wastes (MSW) are modelled as a mixture of four organic constituents: paper, wood, plastics, and vegetables. The various char samples are obtained by pyrolysis of each waste constituent, in a fixed bed reactor at 1000°C, in order to minimize their volatile content and thus, to eliminate any subsequent devolatilization of the carbonaceous residues. These chars are used as raw materials in steam gasification experiments. The gasification studies are performed on each char separately, in a tubular kiln at various temperatures (900°C, 950°C and 1000°C) and various vapour pressures (0.2 bar, 0.5 bar and 0.7 bar). The gases produced are analysed by gas chromatography in order to determine the gasification kinetics. The kinetics parameters, with respect to H2O, together with the influence of the char's physical properties are experimentally determined. A kinetic expression for the gasification reaction, based on the random pore model is deduced. It is shown that the char resulting from the pyrolysis of MSW constituents, essentially paper, wood and vegetables have the same gasification kinetics. On the contrary, the plastic char steam gasification kinetic appears to be significantly slower.
