Economical feasibility of bio-oil production from sewage sludge through pyrolysis

Xin, Chunhua; Zhao, Jingyao; Ruan, Roger; Addy, Min; Liu, Shiyu; Mu, Dongyan

doi:10.2298/tsci170921258x

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…Figure 2 shows this work's SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis reveals that pyrolysis and gasification demonstrate robust pathways for energy recovery, offering high yields of biochar and syngas, albeit with significant capital and operational costs associated with complex reactor systems and downstream processing [10,77,78]. Despite these challenges, the potential for energy generation and resource recovery presents an attractive long-term investment opportunity, with the prospect of reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.…”

Section: Swot Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of the Thermochemical Valorization of Sewage Sludge: Principles and Current Challenges

Rijo,

Nobre,

Brito

et al. 2024

Energies

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With the increase in the world population and economic activity, the production of sewage sludge has grown, and its management has become an environmental problem. The most traditional method of managing sewage sludge is to dispose of it in landfills and on farmland. One way to valorize sewage sludge is to use thermochemical conversion processes to produce added-value products such as biochar, biofuels, and renewable gases. However, due to the high moisture content, thermochemical conversion using processes such as pyrolysis and traditional gasification involves multiple pre-treatment processes such as material drying. Hydrothermal thermochemical processes usually require high pressures, which pose many challenges to their application on a large scale. In this work, the advantages and disadvantages of the different existing thermochemical processes for the recovery of sewage sludge were analyzed, as well as the resulting industrial and environmental challenges. A SWOT analysis was carried out to assess the different thermochemical processes in terms of technical feasibility, economic viability, and broader market considerations.

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Section: Swot Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of the Thermochemical Valorization of Sewage Sludge: Principles and Current Challenges

Rijo,

Nobre,

Brito

et al. 2024

Energies

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“…The economic variables of capital and operating costs of SCWO and SCWG are defined in Equations ( 58) and (59). The objective function to be minimized in the optimization problem is the net annual cost defined in Equation (62), which is the difference between annual costs and annual revenues. The annual costs comprise of the total annualized capital costs (defined by Equations ( 63) and ( 64)), total annual operating costs of the optimal pathway technologies chosen by the model, as in Equation ( 65), and the total disposal costs of the produced byproducts (Equation ( 66)).…”

Section: Pyrolysis Blockmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Superstructure Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming Optimization for the Optimal Processing Pathway Selection of Sludge-to-Energy Technologies

et al. 2023

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The perception of sewage sludge has increasingly changed from being a waste, which is a burden to the environment and society, to a useful resource of materials and renewable energy. There are several available technologies at different stages of maturity that aim to convert sludge to energy in the form of electricity and/or fuels. In this paper, a decision-making support tool is proposed to help in choosing the optimal pathway for the sludge-to-energy conversion from a techno-economic perspective. The conversion technologies under study are: (1) anaerobic digestion, (2) pyrolysis, (3) gasification, (4) incineration, (5) supercritical water oxidation, (6) supercritical water gasification, as well as the corresponding dewatering and drying methods for each technology. Different synergies between the available technologies are compared by the formulation of a superstructure optimization problem expressed in a mixed-integer non-linear program (MINLP) model. The applicability of the proposed model is explored via a case study for a hypothetical sludge treatment plant with a capacity of 100 tons of dry solids (tDS) per day. The model is solved via the BARON solver using GAMS software within a reasonable processing time. According to the obtained results, the fast pyrolysis technology, coupled with filter press dewatering and thermal drying as pre-treatment steps, show the most promising outcomes with the minimum treatment cost of USD 180/tDS. Fast pyrolysis converts the sludge to bio-oil, which can be used as an alternative fuel after further refining, and biochar, which can be used for soil amendment or adsorption purposes. The model parameters are subject to uncertainty that is addressed in the sensitivity analysis section of this paper. Moreover, the pyrolysis pathway shows a high degree of robustness in most of the sensitivity analysis scenarios. Meanwhile, anaerobic digestion coupled with fast pyrolysis demonstrates the best energy recovery performance upon increasing electricity prices.

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“…Sludge, a by-product generated in enormous quantity from various treatment processes, contains large amounts of moisture, colloids, and pollutants, which can cause serious pollution and thus must be treated and disposed [5]. In sludge treatment and disposal, the drying operation is usually required [6,7] but is energy-consuming [8,9]. Existing drying technologies, such as microwave drying technology [10,11], thin layer drying technology [12,13], solar drying technology [14], and paddle drying technology [15,16], still have many shortcomings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drying characteristics of sludge in a rotary drum for fast-drying application

et al. 2021

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High-temperature metallurgical slag (temperature, > 1450 ?C) and high-moisture sludge (moisture content, > 80 wt%) are common wastes with huge outputs. Many problems, such as high cost, low level of harmlessness, and low efficiency, are encountered in current treatment methods. If these wastes can be recycled, they can be valuable secondary resources. Therefore, using the drum apparatuses to treat these two kinds of wastes is proposed. The process uses waste heat of slag to dry sludge with high moisture content and is a kind of alternative circulation treatment technology in which steel balls are used as ball milling media and intermediate heat carriers. Besides, this technology can break up slag or sludge in real time, thereby ensuring high heat or mass transfer rate. This study presents an experimental investigation of the dynamic drying process of wet sludge mixed with hot steel balls in a rotary drum. The relationship of operation parameters (including sludge moisture content, sludge treatment mass, steel ball diameter, and rotary speed of drum) and drying effect is obtained. There are three kinds of final drying results: completely dried to powder, few sludge agglomerations, and sludge-to-wall adhesion. If the operating parameters are set well, the sludge could be efficiently and completely dried and eventually in powder form.

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Economical feasibility of bio-oil production from sewage sludge through pyrolysis

Cited by 12 publications

References 16 publications

An Overview of the Thermochemical Valorization of Sewage Sludge: Principles and Current Challenges

An Overview of the Thermochemical Valorization of Sewage Sludge: Principles and Current Challenges

A Superstructure Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming Optimization for the Optimal Processing Pathway Selection of Sludge-to-Energy Technologies

Drying characteristics of sludge in a rotary drum for fast-drying application

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