Abstract
The amount of Paper Board Mill Effluent Treatment Plant Sludge (PBM-ETPS) dumped from paper mills are huge and its conversion into hydrochar for the purpose of energy has broad prospects. This study investigated the optimum conditions for the production of PBM-ETPS derived hydrochar (PBM-ETPSH) through Reponse Surface Methodology (RSM) for more surface area and pore volume with minimal hydrogen to carbon (H/C) and oxygen to carbon (O/C) ratios. The PBM-ETPSH had higher heating value (HHV) of 18.39 MJ kg−1 with fixed carbon percentage of 15.6. Our results showed a reduction in H/C (35.05%) and O/C (43.7%) ratios confirming the coalification of optimized PBM-ETPSH. Thermogravimetric investigations of blending PBM-ETPSH with coal in 1:1 ratio increased its HHV to 22.25 MJ kg−1 making it suitable as an energy alternative for paper mills.
Highlights
The advent of industrial revolution has boosted an enormous generation of liquid and solid wastes leading to advanced treatment technologies
The present study was taken to convert the PBM-ETPS into Hydrochar by Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process, the optimization of process parameters are considered to be an important for producing hydrochar from PBM-ETPS with anticipated surface and fuel characteristics which was made ease by employing statistical tool named Response Surface Methodology (RSM)
The current research was performed on the (a) optimization of process temperature and time for hydrochar production from PBM-ETPS using RSM, (b) characterization of hydrochar in terms of proximate and elemental composition, structural morphologies, surface functionalities and textural properties
Summary
The advent of industrial revolution has boosted an enormous generation of liquid and solid wastes leading to advanced treatment technologies. The increase of HTC temperature from 180 °C to 300 °C has resulted in the solid yield reduction of hydrochar from 66.18% to 53.00%4. Investigations on thermal behavior of the hydrochar paved way for its utilization as an alternate energy source. Based on this scenario, the current research was performed on the (a) optimization of process temperature and time for hydrochar production from PBM-ETPS using RSM, (b) characterization of hydrochar in terms of proximate and elemental composition, structural morphologies, surface functionalities and textural properties. The higher heating value and thermogravimetric investigations of the optimized hydrochar and commercially utilized coal at different blends were carried out to appraise the combustion behavior for environmental applications
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