Sewage sludge drying and combustion

• Autor(a) principal: Heredia Salgado, Mario Alejandro
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/13409
• topic: Sistemas energéticos sustentáveis; Pasta de papel; Lamas activadas; Tratamento de efluentes

A brief review of the paper pulp production process in order to understand the origin of the sewage sludge was performed. Then a general revision of the current treatment options for this type of waste was addressed. The thermal treatment by combustion was focused and a review of the state of the art of this process was performed. The high moisture content of sludge was identified as a major concern. Thus a revision of the state of the art regarding thermal drying of sewage sludge was performed. The drying behavior of sewage sludge from the pulp and paper industry was evaluated by experiment in a drying tunnel. Strong shrinkage, cracks and a weak crust phenomenon were identified. A drying kinetic model was developed by the use of Artificial Neural Networks achieving a high Pearson correlation coefficient in the validation tests. Additionally a theoretical assessment of the co-combustion process was performed having into account a 50 MWth combustion facility. The inclusion of different portions of sewage sludge in a fuel mixture and the influence of the sludge moisture content was studied. It was found that burning sewage sludge with more than 50 wt% moisture content is not possible. Furthermore the inclusion of sewage sludge in a biomass fuel mixture causes an increase in the fuel consumption, solids production and heat losses in the flue gas. Based on general thermodynamic considerations the thermal power of a sludge dryer was calculated. The use of waste heat to supply the energy needs of the drying process was addressed by the waste heat availability estimation as sensible heat and latent heat at the stack of the facility. A set of combustion experiments were done in a pilot scale bubbling fluidized bed combustor to assess the combustion efficiency by monitoring the CO2, CO, H2O and O2 levels in conjunction with the temperature profile along the reactor height. Two different types of fuel samples were prepared. One composed by 100 wt% sewage sludge (fuel sample 1) and other composed by 50 wt% sewage sludge and 50 wt% residual forest biomass (particle size <1mm) (fuel sample 2). Low CO levels were onserved especially for the fuel sample 2 which indicates a very efficient combustion process. The CO emission level established by the Portuguese law for this type of reactor was never exceeded under typical operating conditions. The temperature profile along the reactor confirms that the combustion of the fuel samples prepared occurs mainly in the freeboard zone. It was not observed agglomeration problems and the fluidization conditions were kept constant during all the experimental tests. After the combustion experiments a considerable ashes quantity were found and its particle size distribution was estimated.