Thermo-kinetic analysis of pyrolysis of thermally pre-treated sewage sludge from the food industry

Abstract

Due to the specific characteristics of sewage sludge from the food industry, including its high fat content, its treatment is quite complex. Therefore, in this study, the effect of the pre-treatment processes torrefaction (T) and hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) on the pyrolysis of industrial sewage sludge (SS) from the vegetable oil industry was investigated by thermogravimetric analysis. Kinetic and thermodynamic analysis was performed using the Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS), Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO), and Friedman (FRI) iso-conversional kinetic models. In addition, the influence of water replacement by whey in the hydrothermal carbonization process was investigated on the subsequent pyrolysis kinetics.The activation energy (Eα) values for pyrolysis of industrial sewage sludge ranged from 49 to 372 kJ/mol. Pre-treatment (torrefaction, hydrothermal carbonization) of sewage sludge increases the activation energy significantly: the Eα values for torrefied (T-SS) and hydrothermally treated (HTC-SS) samples ranged from 177 to 689 kJ/mol and from 161 to 486 kJ/mol, respectively. The variations in activation energy and the generally lower activation energies for the HTC-SSW sample (158–445 kJ/mol) indicate that the use of whey in the HTC process affects the hydrochar properties and subsequent pyrolysis kinetics significantly. According to the results, the pre-treatment of the samples is reflected in better thermochemical properties and stability of the treated samples, as well as in the thermodynamic parameters of pyrolysis, since the pre-treated samples (especially the torrefied sample, T-SS) exhibited higher entropies and enthalpies and lower Gibbs free energies.