Experimental Study of MSW Pyrolysis in a Fixed Bed Reactor

Abstract

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is a potential feedstock for producing transportation fuels because it is readily available using an existing collection/transportation infrastructure and fees are provided by the suppliers or government agencies to treat MSW. The dynamic chemical and physical changes of three organic MSW components of paper, wood, and textile residue during pyrolysis in a fixed bed reactor were characterized. The yields of bio-oil collected at the pyrolysis temperature of 300 °C were 12.0 wt% (wet basis) for textile, 16.3 wt% for paper, and 19.7 wt% for wood. The maximum yields of bio-oil were 52.5 wt% for textile obtained at 700 °C, 57.4 wt% for paper obtained at 600 °C and 64.9 wt% for wood obtained at temperature of 500 °C. The char yields generally decreased with increasing temperature because increased quantities of volatiles from the samples were converted to oil and non-condensable gases. For the pyrolysis temperature from 300 ° to 800 °C, the char yields were between 72.2 and 21.8 wt% (wet basis) for wood, 68.2 and 23.3 wt% for paper and 74.2 % and 22.6 wt% for textile, respectively. The heating values of biochar obtained for all MSW components increased steadily with temperature. The HHVs were from 17.7 MJ/kg at 100 °C to 31.2 MJ/kg at 800 °C for wood, 15.2 MJ/kg at 100 °C to 21.3 MJ/kg at 800 °C for paper and 15.8 MJ/kg at 300 °C to 27.2 MJ/kg at 800°C for textile. Biochar generated from MSW components generally showed an increase in carbon and nitrogen contents with the increase in pyrolysis temperature while oxygen and hydrogen decreased with the temperature.