Abstract
A comprehensive study was conducted on the characteristics of oxygen-controlled carbonization process of sewage sludge (SS) using thermogravimetric analysis and lab-scale carbonization experiment. Reaction temperature of SS carbonization was varied between 250 and 650 °C in carrier gas with different O2 contents. The thermal process of SS in low oxygen could be divided into three stages: dehydration (below 160 °C), devolatilization (160–380 °C), stubborn volatile decomposition and fixed carbon combustion (380–600 °C). Based on Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) and Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (FWO) methods, the reaction activation energy (E) of SS carbonization process in 10% O2 was the lowest, with values of 98.50 kJ mol−1 (KAS) and 103.49 kJ mol−1 (FWO). The properties of the obtained char, tar, and gas products were analyzed by FTIR and GC–MS. With the increase of carbonization temperature, char yield decreased and gas yield increased. The highest yield of tar was 27.76% (N2) and 27.04% (10% O2) at 450 °C. Low-oxygen atmosphere at the same temperature did not change the yield of char but increased the fixed carbon content and its aromaticity. Oxygen would participate in secondary cracking in tar and promote gas generation above 350 °C. It was found that the presence of oxygen not only increased the concentration of H2, CO, and CH4 in gas product, but also improved the quality of tar in terms of high aromatic content and low nitrogen-containing compounds.
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The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors want to appreciate the Analysis and Testing Center of Zhejiang University of Technology for providing detection assistance for this study.
Funding
This work was supported by the projects of the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (No. 2022C03092), the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 52170141), and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LQ21E060007).
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FY was in charge of the sampling of the sewage sludge, part of carbonization process analysis and other experiments, and paper writing. YH was the project leader and finished the design of the experiment, data analysis, conclusion, and paper writing. LL and QG were in charge of data analysis and language improvement. YZ and LJ did the measurement of thermogravimetric analysis in sewage sludge and data analysis. YW and XC were in charge of the oxygen-controlled carbonization process of sewage sludge. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Yu, F., Hu, Y., Li, L. et al. Investigation on oxygen-controlled sewage sludge carbonization with low temperature: from thermal behavior to three-phase product properties. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 31441–31452 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18510-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18510-w