A Study on the Evaluation of Fuel Characteristic and Economic Benefit for Co-combustion of Dried Sewage Sludge with Coal

Abstract

A study on combustion characteristic and evaluation of cost benefit were carried out using dried sewage sludge to evaluate co-combustion with coal in a coal-fired power plant. In the result of proximate analysis, sewage sludge has 78.09%, 79.65% of moisture content in A STP(Sewage Treatment Plant) and B STP, respectively. The dried sewage sludges show 0.12, 0.14 of fuel ratio value, respectively and over 30,000kcal/kg of combustible index. It means that the dried sewage sludges needs to reform from the results of fuel ratio and combustible index. As a results of the economical benefit evaluation of dried sewage sludge, about 73.4 million won through using the dried sewage sludges instead of coal and 56.4 million won through REC(Renewable Energy Certificate) cost were saved, respectively. On the other hand, it occurs 4.2 million won of additional cost related to ash disposal and 2.6 million won of investment/operation cost for co-combustion facility. In conclusion, co-combustion of dried sewage sludges with coal in a coal-fired power plant saves about 123 million won. However, it needs to consider for power supply to produce dried sewage sludges and opportunity cost for environmental pollution and so on to evaluate more reasonable benefit of co-combustion.