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Characterization of municipal solid waste residues for hydrothermal liquefaction into liquid transportation fuels

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journal contribution
posted on 2022-01-25, 16:08 authored by Onyi Okoligwe, Tanja RaduTanja Radu, Mark LeaperMark Leaper, Jonathan WagnerJonathan Wagner
This paper presents and evaluates a new method for characterising municipal solid waste residues for assessing the performance of thermochemical conversion technologies to produce fuels. The method combines information from three complementary analytical techniques to estimate the quantity of key organic waste fractions and was demonstrated using two commercial waste residues: ‘BRDF’ and ‘Floc’ produced from the mechanical processing of domestic waste. Cellulose content (mostly paper and textiles) is estimated using acid hydrolysis, while thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) are combined to determine the plastics (LDPE and PET) and non-volatile fractions such as lignin of the wastes. High mass balance closures were achieved for both residues, although the nature of the non-volatile fraction was difficult to verify. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of cellulose rich BRDF (34.0% cellulose) produced much higher biooil yields than Floc (26.8% and 12.2%, respectively), with a cellulose content of only 22.4%. In both cases, most of the plastic and non-volatile waste fractions partitioned into the solid HTL product, representing a potential method for separating the plastic fractions from other waste components. Importantly, this combined waste characterization method can be used for characterization of any municipal waste residue using acid hydrolysis, TGA and FTIR data, providing accurate information about feedstock composition. It enables comparison between different waste valorisation studies of complex waste residues.

Funding

Royal Society (RGS\R1\191135)

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Department

  • Chemical Engineering

Published in

Waste Management

Volume

140

Pages

133 - 142

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Elsevier

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Waste Management and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2022.01.026.

Acceptance date

2022-01-17

Publication date

2022-01-22

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

0956-053X

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Tanja Radu. Deposit date: 25 January 2022

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