Paper sludge is a solid waste in paper mills and is conventionally treated by, e.g., landfill, composting, and incineration. Paper sludge contains paper production fillers and lignocellulosic biomass, both of which can be recycled to recover circular minerals and produce bio-based fuels and chemicals by, e.g., thermochemical recycling technology namely fast pyrolysis, for circular bioeconomy. In this paper, three different paper sludge samples collected in The Netherlands and Spain were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis, moisture analysis, ash analysis, CHNS elemental analysis, powder X-ray diffraction, and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Fast pyrolysis of paper sludge was carried out in a lab-scale continuous stirred tank reactor at 500 ± 10 °C with a paper sludge feeding rate of 1 kg h−1. The recovery of circular minerals, which are mainly calcium carbonate, is 87.1 ± 2.2 % (on mineral basis). The yields of fast pyrolysis bio-liquid and biochar are 49.2 ± 6.7 wt% (on biomass basis, equivalent to 23.7 ± 2.2 wt% on paper sludge basis) and 23.8 ± 8.3 wt% (on biomass basis). Fast pyrolysis bio-liquid is a diluted aqueous containing various oxygenates (major, including alcohols, acids, benzenoid aromatics, aldehydes, ketones, ethers, and esters) and hydrocarbons. Liquid-liquid extraction of the fast pyrolysis bio-liquid using CH3OH/H2O and SO2/H2O was further performed to obtain an improved bio-liquid with relatively high concentration of the desired bio-based chemicals (namely benzenoid aromatics with the concentration of 53.1–65.9 area%). Both SO2/H2O and CH3OH/H2O show high liquid-liquid extraction efficiency to concentrate the benzenoid aromatics for 3.4–11.0 times. This work shows the fast pyrolysis followed by liquid-liquid extraction for the valorization of paper sludge, of which the former has been recently demonstrated on a pilot-scale unit in industry. However, the latter still needs to be further developed by, e.g., focusing on the extraction solvent and continuous liquid-liquid extraction process integrated to fast pyrolysis.
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