Abstract
The combustible fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) is called refuse-derived fuel (RDF). RDF is a blend of heterogeneous materials and thus its handling is challenging. Pelletization is an efficient treatment to minimize the heterogeneity. In this research, typical RDF compositions were prepared by mixing several mass fractions of paper, plastic, household organic and wood. The collected compositions were ground, wetted to 20% moisture content (wet basis) and pelletized. Increasing the plastic content from 20% to 40% reduced the pelletization energy but increased the pellet’s calorific value. Pellets with higher plastic content generated more dust when exposed to shaking. Making durable pellets with 40% plastic content needed an increase in die temperature from 80 °C to 100 °C. Increasing the paper content from 30% to 50% increased the durability but consumed higher energy to form pellets. Paper particles increased the friction between pellet’s surface and die wall as was evident from expulsion energy. Force versus displacement curve for material compression revealed that the RDF compositions have rigid material characteristics.
Highlights
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is becoming complicated by the exponential growth of the global population [1]
Larger paper content shifted the particle size distribution (PSD) to the larger particles
This research presented the pelletization of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) samples made up of several proportions of paper, plastic and organic material
Summary
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is becoming complicated by the exponential growth of the global population [1]. MSW consists of three major fractions of combustible, non-combustible and moisture or evaporative material [10,11]. RDF is combusted individually or co-fired in the cement kilns [14,15,16], steel furnaces, power stations [17], or incinerated in energy-from-waste plants [5,18,19]. The industrial pneumatic flow of RDF is not feasible, because the RDF components have different density values. Making the pellet form of solid waste reduces the variability in size, moisture and density. Using pellet form of feedstock facilitates the handling and flowability of material [21,22,23,24]
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