Comparison study between pyrolysis products of oil refinery sludge and sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants

• Main Authors: ALMukhtar, Riyadh, Hammoodi, Sally I., Omar, Rua'a
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activated sludge; Biofuels; Experiments; Heating rate; Liquid fuels; Petroleum refineries; Pyrolysis; Refineries; Sludge; Thermogravimetric analysis; Wastewater treatment; Water treatment
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0092021

Wastewater treatment plant at municipal, and refinery plants both produced solid sludge, which is in considered an environmental problem must be take care off. Thermal pyrolysis of the accumulate sludge is promising solution for this problem, because thermal pyrolysis can produce biofuel. In this research thermal pyrolysis of oil refinery ,primary and waste activated sludge (WAS), was carried out in semi batch reactor (diameter 10 cm and height 50 cm)made of glass, equipped with electrical heater ,nitrogen gas was used as purging gas , the experiments was carried out at temperature range of 350 to 450 ℃ . Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) at a heating rate of 10 C°/min was investigated to the three types of the sludge, as well as the approximate and ultimate analyzes to the sludge samples were performed before start thermal pyrolysis experiments. Approximate analyzes showed that volatiles matter at oil refinery sludge was the highest with 40.08 wt.%, while the other sludge samples were 25.33wt.% and 15.5 wt.% waste activated sludge and primary sludge respectively. The maximum liquid fuel produced by pyrolysis experiments was 28.97 wt.%, 17.35 wt.%, 14.12 wt.% for oil refinery sludge, WAS and primary sludge respectively, at optimum conditions (temperature 400℃ and heating time (30 min)). The produced liquid fuel composition and properties are influenced by the content of organic substance, volatile matter and pyrolysis conditions, the highest liquid fuel yield was obtained from oil refinery sludge because, oil sludge content higher volatile matter than the other two samples. The API of the produced fuel liquid was in the range of 12–16.5, and the highest fuel API produced from oil refinery sludge pyrolysis was 16.5.