Investigation on Combustion Characteristics of Sewage Sludge using Pilot-scale Bubbling Fluidized Bed Reactor

To estimate the combustion characteristics of sewage sludge and wood pellet, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted. As TGA results, combustion characteristics of sewage sludge was worse than wood pellet. In ash fusion temperature (AFT) analysis, slagging tendency of sewage sludge is very high compared to wood pellet. And also, the bubbling fluidized bed reactor with a inner diameter 400 mm and a height of 4300 mm was used for experimental study of combustion characteristics fueled by sewage sludge and wood pellet. The facility consists of a fluidized bed reactor, preheater, screw feeder, cyclone, ash capture equipment and gas analyzer. The thermal input of sewage sludge cases were 54.5 ~ 96.5 kWth, in case of wood pellet experiment, it was 96.1 kWth. As experiment results, the NOx emission of sewage sludge was averagely about 10 times the NOx emission of wood pellet. And also CO emission of sewage sludge is about 3.5 times of wood pellet. Lastly as a result of analysis of captured ash in cyclone, the combustion efficiency of all cases were over 99%, but the potential for slagging/fouling was high at all cases by component analysis of ash.22Nkc