Co-pyrolysis of petrochemical sludge and sawdust for syngas production by TG-MS and fixed bed reactor

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to investigate the syngas production from petrochemical sludge (PS) and sawdust (SD) co-pyrolysis. In this study, the pyrolysis experiments of PS, SD and their blends were carried out in TG-MS analyzer and fixed bed reactor. The effects of pyrolysis temperature and interactions between PS and SD on gas evolution behavior, products distribution and gas compositions were investigated. The PS pyrolysis result showed high temperature favored the gas production and there was a distinct increase in gas yield when temperature exceeded 700 °C. The Fe3O4 in solid was reduced by carbon with the generation of CO and CO2, leading to the increase of gas yield. During the co-pyrolysis process, significant interactions between PS and SD were observed. SD addition promoted the increase of gas yield, as well as the generation of H2 and CO. In addition, the activation energy during co-pyrolysis process was reduced due to the interaction. The strongest accelerative effect on gas yield appeared at 60 wt% SD, under which the gas yield was 39.59 wt%, H2+CO content was 61.34 vol%, LHV was 13.39 MJ/Nm3. It was concluded that SD addition was conductive to syngas production from PS pyrolysis.