Eulerian Model for Municipal Solid Waste Gasification in a Fixed-Bed Plasma Gasification Melting Reactor

Abstract

Plasma gasification melting (PGM) is a promising waste-to-energy process, which provides many features superior to those of conventional gasification. In this work, a steady Euler–Euler multiphase model is developed to predict the performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) gasification inside a PGM reactor. The model considers the main chemical and physical processes, such as drying, pyrolysis, homogeneous reactions, heterogeneous char reactions, and melting of the inorganic components of MSW. The model is validated by one experimental test of a pilot reactor. The characteristics of PGM gasification, such as temperature distribution, syngas composition, tar yield, and energy conversion ratio (ECR, chemical energy of the gas phase divided by the total energy input), at the proposed condition are discussed. A total of nine cases are used to investigate the effects of the equivalence ratio (ER) and plasma power with a fixed flow rate of MSW. It is found that the ER has a positive effect on the cold gas efficiency of PGM gasification. However, the increase of the ER is restricted by the peak temperature. The influence of the plasma power then is not obvious for PGM gasification.

Gasification of wastes: The impact of the feedstock type and co‐gasification on the formation of volatiles and char

“…Pyrolysis and gasification are the major thermochemical processes to convert the municipal solid waste into liquid and gas fuels, respectively . Gasification process has been studied since mid‐1800s to convert coal and biomass into flammable gases . The gas obtained from the gasification can be used as a fuel or can be converted to the chemicals after purification processes .…”

“…Moreover, the pyrolysis technology is newer than gasification process and not used as widely as gasification . There are limited number of pyrolysis plants in demonstration scale …”

“…[13][14][15][16][17][18] Gasification process has been studied since mid-1800s to convert coal and biomass into flammable gases. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] The gas obtained from the gasification can be used as a fuel or can be converted to the chemicals after purification processes. [10][11][12] Furthermore, it can be transferred from the plant to elsewhere by pipelines.…”

“…23 There are limited number of pyrolysis plants in demonstration scale. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Municipal waste includes trash such as metals, bulbs, biomass, tire, plastic, and carton box. The solid organic part of that can be used in the gasification process to obtain the energy.…”

A hybrid thermo‐kinetic model for high temperature plasma gasification

“…Along with the two approaches of thermodynamic and kinetic modeling, computational fluid dynamics approach (CFD) has also been used to study the process of plasma gasification in the literature (Matveev and Serbin, 8 Serbin and Matveev, 9 Zhang et al 10 ). As CFD simulations involve design parameters of the plasma gasifier, this approach is very specific to the reactor.…”