Entrained Flow Plasma Gasification of Sewage Sludge–Proof-of-Concept and Fate of Inorganics
Vishwajeet,
Halina Pawlak-Kruczek,
Marcin Baranowski,
Michał Czerep,
Artur Chorążyczewski,
Krystian Krochmalny,
Michał Ostrycharczyk,
Paweł Ziółkowski,
Paweł Madejski,
Tadeusz Mączka,
Amit Arora,
Tomasz Hardy,
Lukasz Niedzwiecki,
Janusz Badur,
Dariusz Mikielewicz
Affiliations
Vishwajeet
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Halina Pawlak-Kruczek
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Marcin Baranowski
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Michał Czerep
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Artur Chorążyczewski
Department of Automatic Control, Faculty of Electronics, Mechatronics and Control Systems, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Krystian Krochmalny
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Michał Ostrycharczyk
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Paweł Ziółkowski
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Ship Technology, Institute of Energy, Gdańsk University of Technology, 80-233 Gdańsk, Poland
Paweł Madejski
Department of Power Systems and Environmental Protection Facilities, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, AGH University of Science and Technology, 30-059 Kraków, Poland
Tadeusz Mączka
Institute of Power Systems Automation, 51-618 Wrocław, Poland
Amit Arora
Department of Chemical Engineering, Shaheed Bhagat Singh State University, Ferozepur 152004, Punjab, India
Tomasz Hardy
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Lukasz Niedzwiecki
Department of Energy Conversion Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland
Janusz Badur
Energy Conversion Department, Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery, Polish Academy of Sciences, 80-231 Gdańsk, Poland
Dariusz Mikielewicz
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Ship Technology, Institute of Energy, Gdańsk University of Technology, 80-233 Gdańsk, Poland
Sewage sludge is a residue of wastewater processing that is biologically active and consists of water, organic matter, including dead and living pathogens, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals, as well as organic and inorganic pollutants. Landfilling is on the decline, giving way to more environmentally friendly utilisation routes. This paper presents the results of a two-stage gasification–vitrification system, using a prototype-entrained flow plasma-assisted gasification reactor along with ex situ plasma vitrification. The results show that the use of plasma has a considerable influence on the quality of gas, with a higher heating value of dry gas exceeding 7.5 MJ/mN3, excluding nitrogen dilution. However, dilution from plasma gases becomes the main problem, giving a lower heating value of dry gas with the highest value being 5.36 MJ/mN3 when dilution by nitrogen from plasma torches is taken into account. An analysis of the residues showed a very low leaching inclination of ex-situ vitrified residues. This suggests that such a system could be used to avoid the problem of landfilling significant amounts of ash from sewage sludge incineration by turning inorganic residues into a by-product that has potential use as a construction aggregate.
