Pyrolysis and gasification characterization of sewage sludge for high quality gas and char production

A study on pyrolysis, steam gasification, and carbonization-activation was conducted to produce energy and resource from waste sewage sludge. Carbonization-activation is a sequential process of pyrolysis and steam gasification. The experiment was conducted with a batch-type fixed bed reactor. A comparative analysis on the formation characteristics of products, such as gas, tar, and char, was conducted to evaluate the three cases. For sludge char, carbonization-activation showed the largest amount of porosity in the char, and its specific surface area was 80.28 m(2)/g with an average pore diameter of 6.229 nm. The best adsorption ability of benzene, a light tar, was 175 mg/g. For the producer gas, steam gasification obtained the largest amount of 20.1 L. Similarly, carbonization-activation showed a large value of 16.6 L. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide concentrations were higher in the producer gas due to steam reforming compared with carbonization-activation. Energy yields were 209 kJ and 226 kJ for steam gasification and carbonization-activation, respectively. The amount of tar formation did not show a significant difference, but the largest one was found in steam gasification. The gravimetric tar amount for steam gasification was 23.5 g/Nm(3). However, the selected light tar displayed the lowest concentration for the carbonization-activation. Such concentrations were 2.79 g/Nm(3), 0.75 g/Nm(3), 0.14 g/Nm(3), and 0.14 g/Nm(3) for benzene, naphthalene, anthracene, and pyrene, respectively. Therefore, carbonization-activation was found to be the most effective process for producing high quality sludge char and producer gas for utilizing waste sludge into renewable energy and resources.