Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 238, 2021
100RES 2020 – Applied Energy Symposium (ICAE), 100% RENEWABLE: Strategies, Technologies and Challenges for a Fossil Free Future
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Article Number | 01006 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Renewable Energies | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202123801006 | |
Published online | 16 February 2021 |
Oxy-steam co-gasification of sewage sludge and woody biomass for bio-methane production: an experimental and numerical approach
1
Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering (DICI), University of Pisa, Italy
2
Department of Energy, System, Territory and Construction Engineering (DESTEC), University of Pisa, Italy
3
Biosyn srl, Roma, Italy
* Corresponding author – email: stefano.frigo@unipi.it
Sewage sludge management is a current problem of extreme concern in Europe. Till now, the most frequent route for sludge management has been incineration or the reuse by shedding on agricultural land both directly or after composting. However, this last method is critically reconsidered lately owing to the increasing contamination of sewage sludge by chemicals, heavy metals, residual organic oils, etc..
In the present study, the performance of a steam-oxy gasification plant has been analyzed. The plant allows the thermo-chemical conversion of sewage sludge, together with woody biomass, into a gas mixture (syngas) composed by basic chemicals (synthetic hydrocarbons), suitable for subsequent industrial production of very high added-value products such as methane.
In particular, a numerical model of methanation plant, composed by a downdraft gasifier, a syngas cleaning system and a Sabatier reactor, has been created within the commercial code Aspen-One and validated with the results obtained from a real scale air gasifier fed with sewage sludge and woody biomass.
First results showed that the steam-oxy co-gasification process has a high energy conversion efficiency that reaches roughly 80% (i.e. produced syngas calorific value vs the dried feedstock calorific value) with an overall methane yield of about 20% (by mass) of the feedstock utilized.
Key words: sewage sludge / biomass / oxy-steam co-gasification / bio-methane / Aspen Plus
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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