Investigation of sewage sludge treatment using air plasma assisted gasification

Striūgas, Nerijus; Valincius, Vitas; Pedišius, Nerijus; Poškas, Robertas; Zakarauskas, Kęstutis

doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2017.03.024

Cited by 59 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Various gas cleaning systems might be used for tar and particle removal, as reported in [32]. Generally, the use of the plasma method may also help to reduce the tar and particulate content in the product gases without a need for filtering, catalyzing or other cleaning methods [33].…”

Section: Tar Content In the Producer Gas (Syngas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gasification of Waste Cooking Oil to Syngas by Thermal Arc Plasma

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The depletion and usage of fossil fuels causes environmental issues and alternative fuels and technologies are urgently required. Therefore, thermal arc water vapor plasma for a fast and robust waste/biomass treatment is an alternative to the syngas method. Waste cooking oil (WCO) can be used as an alternative potential feedstock for syngas production. The goal of this experimental study was to conduct experiments gasifying waste cooking oil to syngas. The WCO was characterized in order to examine its properties and composition in the conversion process. The WCO gasification system was quantified in terms of the produced gas concentration, the H2/CO ratio, the lower heating value (LHV), the carbon conversion efficiency (CCE), the energy conversion efficiency (ECE), the specific energy requirements (SER), and the tar content in the syngas. The best gasification process efficiency was obtained at the gasifying agent-to-feedstock (S/WCO) ratio of 2.33. At this ratio, the highest concentration of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, the H2/CO ratio, the LHV, the CCE, the ECE, the SER, and the tar content were 47.9%, 22.42%, 2.14, 12.7 MJ/Nm3, 41.3% 85.42%, 196.2 kJ/mol (or 1.8 kWh/kg), and 0.18 g/Nm3, respectively. As a general conclusion, it can be stated that the thermal arc-plasma method used in this study can be effectively used for waste cooking oil gasification to high quality syngas with a rather low content of tars.

show abstract

Section: Tar Content In the Producer Gas (Syngas)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gasification of Waste Cooking Oil to Syngas by Thermal Arc Plasma

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A solution to this was found in thermal processing of sewage sludge. The most common approach is the incineration [7,12], but it involves the emission of significant amounts of pollutants such as SO 2 , NO x , and heavy metals [7,13]. Alternatively, sewage sludge could be processed via gasification resulting in the production of valuable producer gas of flexible utility [7,10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…500-700 °C [15,23] but the catalyst itself may be expensive and vulnerable to poisoning and deactivation (as it is in the case of the most commonly tested nickel catalyst [23,24]). The poisoning may be especially problematic in the case of sewage sludge gasification, due to its high content of S and N [12,13]. Sulfur and nitrogen compounds present in the produced gas are a well-known catalyst poison [25][26][27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many plasma techniques have been investigated in terms of tars conversion, e.g. corona discharge [31,32], dielectric barrier discharge [33,34], arc plasma [12,35], gliding arc plasma [36][37][38], and microwave plasma (MWP) [28, [39][40][41]. The previous research of the authors proved that MWP might allow high conversion of tar compounds, while at the same time it influences gas composition increasing the content of H 2 and CO at the cost of CO 2 and hydrocarbons [28,40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…using nitrogen and/or argon as a plasma gas or model tar compounds like toluene. There are very few articles where a real producer gas [12,31,35] is applied and none of them involve MWP. While the authors' recently published article [28] presents the results from the labscale MWP tar conversion in the atmosphere of simulated producer gas, it is still quite a simplification.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Sewage Sludge-Derived Producer Gas Valorization with the Use of Atmospheric Microwave Plasma

Wnukowski

Kordylewski

Łuszkiewicz

et al. 2019

Waste Biomass Valor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Atmospheric microwave plasma was applied to the processing of the partially cleaned producer gas obtained from sewage sludge gasification. The plasma processing resulted in residual tar compounds conversion and changes in the gas composition. During the tests with a different gas flow rates and microwave power inputs, liquid and gaseous samples were collected to evaluate the plasma reactor's performance. The conversion efficiency ranged from 19 to 100% and it depended on the specific energy input (SEI), gas flow rate, initial tar concentration, and the nature of the tars compounds. Generally, it was shown that the conversion rate increased with the SEI and that the aliphatic, cyclic and substituted compounds were converted much easier than benzene. Moreover, applying plasma led to the production of heavier aromatics (i.e. naphthalene, indene, acenaphthylene) but the rise in their concentration was significantly smaller than the amount of converted compounds. The gas composition changes revealed in the increase of H 2 and CO concentration that was an effect of hydrocarbons and CO 2 conversion. Additionally, it was indicated that the microwave plasma reactor's performance was noticeably worse than in the case of the laboratory test with a simulated producer gas. This was mainly attributed to differences in the reactors' geometry, lower hydrogen concentration and the presence of inorganic deposit on the reactor's walls that might have inhibited microwaves transfer. In general, the microwave plasma technology seems promising in the context of cleaning and upgrading the producer gas, however, further optimization research is necessary to make it more reliable and less energy consuming. Graphic AbstractBiomass-derived producer gas treatment in the context of tar conversion is a current and important research issue. Many plasma techniques have been investigated to solve the problem of tar's presence. However, most of them considered simplified model mixtures of gas and a model tar compound. There is a negligible amount of research that applies a real producer gas obtained in the gasification process. Moreover, none of them includes microwave plasma, which has a few promising features considering producer gas valorization. Therefore, the main goal and novelty of this work were to investigate the microwave plasma treatment of the gas derived from sewage sludge gasification and to compare it with the results obtain in laboratory research using model mixtures.

show abstract