Fuel 93 (2012) 486491

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Cogasication of sewage sludge in an updraft gasier

M. Seggiani , S. Vitolo, M. Puccini, A. Bellini
Department of Chemical Engineering, Industrial Chemistry and Material Science, University of Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino 1, 56126 Pisa, Italy

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Sewage sludge is the residue produced by the domestic or industrial wastewaters treatment plants. According to the principles of sustainability, several restrictions have been imposed on the conventional methods currently adopted for its disposal. The consequent need to develop alternative processes for the use of sewage sludge for energy purposes such as gasication requires experimental tests in order to quantify the potential energy recover from this waste, as well as to evaluate the optimum conditions for its gasication. In the present study, the gasication with air of dehydrated sewage sludge (20 wt.% moisture) mixed with conventional woody biomass was performed in a pilot scale updraft xed-bed gasier operating at atmospheric pressure. Attention was focused on the effect of the sewage sludge content and the equivalent ratio (ratio between the amount of air used and the stoichiometric air needed for combustion) on the product yields, gas composition and cold gas efciency. The results obtained showed that it is possible to cogasify sewage sludge with wood pellets in pre-existing updraft xed-bed gasication installations. However, at high sewage sludge content (P70 w/w%) slagging and an excessive clinker formation may occur in the oxidation zone because of the high ash content and low ash fusion temperatures of the sludge making the gasication process unstable. In addition, the formation of an ash layer on the grate requires persistent ash discharge that introduces instabilities in the gasier operating conditions. The rise in the equivalent ratio led to higher gas and carbon yields and cold gas efciencies. At the optimal equivalent ratio of 0.25, compared with wood pellets gasication, the addition of sewage sludge with 20 wt.% moisture up to 70 w/w% gave rise to decreasing the dry gas yield from 1.56 to 1.07 Nm3/kg of feedstock due to the higher moisture and ash content of sewage sludge and to moderate reductions of the gas lower heating value and cold gas efciency from 5:8 to 4:9 MJ=Nm3 dry and from 60% to 55%, respectively. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 26 November 2010 Received in revised form 17 August 2011 Accepted 24 August 2011 Available online 9 September 2011 Keywords: Sewage sludge Gasication Updraft gasier Energy recovery

1. Introduction Sewage sludge is the residue produced by the treatment of municipal and industrial wastewaters and contains organic matter, nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and, in lower concentrations, calcium, sulphur and magnesium, that make it interesting as fertiliser. On the other hand, the presence of harmful substances such as heavy metals, poorly biodegradable organic compounds (persistent organic pollutants), viruses [1], pharmaceuticals and hormones, as well as dioxins, may represent a complication in the disposal management strategies [2]. The main methods used currently for the disposal of sewage sludge including landll and application to agricultural land have become much less acceptable in the Europian Union (EU). The Landll Directive 99/31/EEC [3] has introduced the reduction of biodegradable municipal waste to landll. Besides, applying sewage sludge to soil might provide metals in potentially toxic amounts, and may originate problems of bioaccumulation in
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 050 2217881; fax: +39 050 2217866.
E-mail address: m.seggiani@diccism.unipi.it (M. Seggiani). 0016-2361/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2011.08.054

plants, animal, or man. For this reason, some European countries are abandoning or have already ceased the disposal of sewage sludge in agriculture. It appears thus necessary to develop alternative processes for the management of the signicant amount of this waste that will be produced in the next years according to a sustainable route. In some EU countries, thermal treatments such as incineration and gasication are now emerging as the most promising alternatives. Gasication provides an attractive alternative to incineration for the thermal treatment of sewage sludge. Gasication is a thermal conversion at high temperature of carbonaceous solids to combustible gas and ash in a reducing atmosphere. This process has all the advantages of incineration, including complete sterilization of the sludge and reduction of its mass to the ash content. Additionally, gasication prevents, compared to incineration, problems from occurring emissions of sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and y ash and the potential production of dioxins and furans as a consequence of the reducing atmosphere, unlike the oxidising atmosphere typical of incineration. The rst preliminary study on sewage sludge gasication was presented in 1994 [4]. Encouraging studies on sewage sludge

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gasication in a laboratory scale throated downdraft gasier have been reported by Midilli et al. [5] and successively by Dogru et al. [6]. In these studies, a product gas with an average caloric value between 2.5 and 3.2 MJ/Nm3 was obtained with cold gas efciencies between 48% and 57%. Petersen and Werther [7] have carried out gasication experiments with dried sewage sludge (>90% dry matter) in a pilot-scale circulating uidized bed. Many et al. [8] have reported studies on the effect of the gas residence time and air ratio on the gasication of dried sewage sludge in a laboratory scale bubbling uidized bed. Pinto et al. [9,10] have studied the co-gasication of sewage sludge blended with coal and straw pellets in a bench scale atmospheric uidized bed gasier. In this study, updraft xed-bed gasication of sewage sludge mixed with wood pellets was experimentally investigated in that though several industrial updraft xed-bed plants are in operation in Northern Europe for wood chips gasication, detailed information is not available for the gasication characteristics of different feedstocks. In particular, no experimental analysis is currently available in literature on updraft gasication of sewage sludge mixed with a traditional fuel such as wood with measurements of temperature proles and gas composition for different operating conditions. To be economically competitive, a gasication plant should be operated with different locally available feedstocks. The gasication with air of sewage sludge with 20% moisture was experimentally investigated using a pilot scale updraft xedbed reactor. Experimental tests were conducted at different values of air-feedstock ratio and blending sewage sludge with wood pellets to obtain a feedstock composition with 0%, 30%, 70% and 100% (w/w) of sewage sludge in order to analyze the gasication behaviour of sewage sludge and the effects of its addition on gasication performance of conventional woody biomass. The gasication performance was evaluated in terms of gas yield and composition, average cold gas efciency and product yields. 2. Experimental The sample of sewage sludge (SS) used in this work was produced in an Italian urban wastewater treatment plant. The sludge, extracted from the primary settler and treated by anaerobic digestion, was thermally dried up to a moisture content of 20% (by weight) and reduced to pellets. The experimental tests were carried out by blending SS with wood pellets (WP) to obtain blends with 30 and 70 w/w% of sewage sludge. Table 1 reports the proximate and ultimate analyses, and some physical properties of SS and WP. High Heat Values were experimentally measured with bomb-calorimeter, while Low Heat Values were calculated on the basis of hydrogen content on dry basis. The ash-fusion temperatures, used as indicator of fouling/slagging tendency in gasication/combustion systems, were measured under reducing atmosphere (60% CO, 40% CO2) in laboratory in accordance with the ASTM method D 1857. Gasication tests were performed in a pilot-scale plant operating at atmospheric pressure whose schematic owsheet is reported in Fig. 1. It mainly consists of a solid feeding system, an updraft gasier and a gas cleaning-up system. The solid feeding system consists of an hopper and a variable-speed screw feeder that continuously feeds the pellets inside the reactor at a level located 1000 mm above the grate. The gasier is a stainless steel cylindrical reactor with an internal diameter of 165 mm and a height of 2000 mm. The solid bed rests on a xed grate equipped with an automatic ash removal system. Temperature proles along the gasier bed are measured by eight K-type thermocouples, disposed 70 mm apart one from the other above the grate. The gasier is externally covered with an insulating blanket to reduce heat loss. The incoming air ow rate is measured by a owmeter and can

Table 1 Sewage sludge and wood pellets characteristics. Sewage sludge Proximate analysis (% w/w) Moisture Volatile matter Ash Fixed carbon (by difference) Ultimate analysis (% w/w daf) Carbon Hydrogen Nitrogen Sulphur Oxygen (by difference) Geometry of pellets Mean diameter (mm) Mean length (mm) Bed density (kg/m3) Caloric values HHV (MJ/kgdry) LHV (MJ/kgdry) Ash fusion temperatures Initial deformation (C) Softening (C) Hemispherical(C) Fluid (C) 20.0 44.0 30.9 5.1 51.2 8.2 7.1 1.7 31.8 5 11 550 15.0 12.0 1010 1185 1215 1425 Wood pellets 8.0 74.1 0.7 17.2 49.3 6.2 <0.1 <0.1 44.5 5 10 700 18.3 16.7 1394 1400 1408 1500

be automatically controlled. Once the product gas leaves the gasier, it is conveyed through a cleaning/cooling system. The gas ows through a cyclone and two wet scrubbers (a venturi-scrubber with a wet cyclone and a spray-column scrubber) that work in series to remove dust and tars and have two independent water circuits. Final cleaning of gas is performed by a packed-bed lter followed by a paper lter. Finally, the cleaned gas passes through the fan which is utilised to draw the gas from the gasier. After the fan, part of the cleaned gas is sent to the analysis section and the rest is burned in a are. The product gas ow rate was measured by a gas ow metre located after the suction fan. The gas composition is analysed by a gas chromatograph and a mass spectrometer (Agilent 5975C series GC/MSD System) operating with two capillary columns in parallel (SUPELCO Carboxen GC PLOT 1010 and HP GS-GasPRO separates) to determine the content of CO, H2, CO2, CH4, and CnHm (gaseous hydrocarbons heavier than CH4, with the number of carbon atoms between 2 and 4). The analysis time is approximately 30 min. Gas composition values were converted to a dry basis to eliminate the effect of moisture (about 3 vol.%) on concentrations of the gas obtained. Each gasication test lasted from 6 to 8 h. Every run was characterised by a transitory period of start-up in which the reactor was heated up to 400500 C by ignition of a solid batch by auxiliary fuel (LPG). As the temperature is raised, the feed and the air ow rate were set to the selected values until the steady-state was reached in terms of thermal prole and gas concentration. To stop the run, the gas sampling valve was closed, air ow was increased in order to consume the residual solid bed and all other systems were turned off. To evaluate the amount of air needed for stoichiometric combustion of the feedstock, carbon and hydrogen content were considered. The equivalent ratio (ER) was calculated as follows:

ER

air used for gasification stoichiometric air for complete combustion

Experiments were performed using the same speed of screw feeder (constant driver frequency) and this led to obtain different feed rates due to different properties (bulk density and compressibility) of the four tested feedstocks: 100% WP, 30/70 SS/WP, 70/ 30 SS/WP and 100% SS. On the basis of the feed composition and

488

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FLARE FEEDSTOCK

10

1 2
GAS SAMPLING

3 6 4 12
AIR

12

WATER

8
WATER

11

Fig. 1. Schematic owsheet of the gasication pilot plant: (1) feed hopper, (2) screw feeder, (3) gasier, (4) cyclone, (5) venture scrubber, (6) wet cyclone, (7) wet scrubber, (8) packed-bed lter, (9) paper lter, (10) are, (11) water tank and (12) water lter.

rate the air ow rate was varied in order to operate with three different values of ER: 0.15, 0.2 and 0.25. Higher ER values were not used because of too high temperatures (>1100 C) observed in the oxidation zone close to the grate that led to an excessive clinker formation in the case 100 wt.% SS. This makes gasication process very irregular with very high oscillations in the gas composition and production. Consequently, it was not possible to achieve steady-state gasication conditions with ER greater than 0.25. Two replicates of each experimental condition (SS content and ER) were carried out in order to ensure the reproducibility of experiments results. When deviations higher than 5% in experimental determinations were observed, more tests were carried out to maintain an uncertainly lower than 5%. The continuously monitored parameters were the temperatures within reactor and the ow-rate of the produced gas. The gasier performance was evaluated in terms of the specic dry gas yield (ggas), lower heating value (LHV) of the dry product gas, cold gas efciency (CGE) and percentage of carbon in the feedstock recovered in the gas (ycarbon). The dry product gas LHV has been calculated from the average composition of the dry product gas using the following equation:

3. Results and discussion The feed moisture content greatly affects both the operation of the gasier and the quality of the produced gas. The moisture content limits for gasier fuels are dependent on the type of gasier used. The upper limit of moisture for a downdraft gasier is generally considered to be not more than 25% wet basis, while for updraft gasier the maximum moisture content is set to 50% wet basis [6,11,12]. Still it is generally desirable to limit the moisture below 30% wet basis also for updraft gasiers in order to reduce the heat subtracted to the reactor energy balance for the heating and vaporisation of water. In this study, the average moisture content of the dehydrated sewage sludge and wood pellets were 20% and 8% wet basis, respectively, thus well below the upper limit. However, since the amount of ash in sewage sludge is very high (close to 30%, see Table 1), compared to the generally low ash content of conventional biomasses (typically <3%), the moisture content limit must be evaluated with respect to the ash free energetic fraction of the feed. In our case, the moisture content of the dehydrated sewage sludge on ash free basis was about 29%, thus still acceptable. About the dynamic behaviour of gasier, the gasication of WP and WP/SS 70/30 blend resulted in a highly reproducible process with regular steady states. The situation was more complicated for SS and WP/SS 30/70 blend, owing to the heterogeneity of the SS, potential ash aggregation in the oxidation zone and formation of an ash layer at the bottom of the gasier. In fact, ash fusion temperatures of SS are lower than those of WP (Table 1) and hence SS resulted more prone to ash aggregation in the combustion zone where temperatures closed to its initial deformation temperature (10001100 C) were reached making air distribution during gasication and the subsequent reactor cleaning difcult. In addition, quantity of ash produced for each test was low for WP (78 g per 1 kg of WP gasied) but the quantities become signicant for SS (about 300 g per 1 kg of SS gasied). Therefore, for SS and WP/SS 30/70 blends frequent solid discharge at the grate was necessary. This operation was accomplished when a attening of the temperature prole at the bottom of the gasier or a displacement of the combustion front well above the grate were observed. After ash discharge a very rapid temperature rise was observed near the grate and, as expected, a slight reduction in the upper zone, due

LHVkJ=Nm3 yCO 12621 yH2 10779 yCH4 35874 yC2 H4 59483 yC2 H6 64423
where yi values are mole fractions of main combustible components in the dry producer gas. CGE was evaluated as follows:

CGE

dry product gas flowrate LHVdry gas dry biomass flowrate LHV dry biomass

and ggas was calculated per weight of dry ash free (daf) feedstock as follows:

ggas

dry product gas Nm3 daf feedstock kgdaf

The use of a dry ash free basis allows a better comparison between the gas productions when the moisture and ash contents in the feedstocks are very dissimilar, as in this study.

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to bed movement. The average temperature proles before and after ash discharge were considered for the examination of the steady state of the gasier in these cases. Examples of average axial temperature proles measured at the steady-state along the gasier bed (about 50 cm) for the four different feedstocks at ER of 0.25 are reported in Fig. 2. The temperature proles are representative of the different processes stratied occurring along the reactor axis from top to bottom: drying, pyrolysis, gasication and combustion. On the gasier top the feedstock is heated up by the hot gases counter-current owing and evaporation (strongly endothermic reaction) of fuel moisture usually starts immediately. Above temperatures of around 200 C pyrolysis of dried fuel takes place and char particles and volatiles are formed. The char particles move downwards, heat up and get reduced by hot gases as gasication processes start above approximately 700 C. Finally the char is oxidised by the supplied air at the bottom of the gasier, where peak temperatures are reached, supplying heat necessary for the overlying processes. In practice, overlapping occurs and it is not possible, by means of temperature measurements, to exactly identify the boundaries between the different reaction zones. However, some considerations can be made through the characteristic process temperatures. As may been observed in Fig. 2, the increase of sewage sludge content led to a marked temperature reduction in the upper zone where the drying of fresh feedstock occurred. This is due to higher moisture content of sewage sludge compared to that of wood pellets that led to higher energy requirement for drying followed by a decrease of temperature and a marked extension of the drying region (about 2530 cm). Consequently, for SS and WP/SS 30/70 the pyrolysis region (approximately between 200 and 500 C) resulted more limited (710 cm) compared to that obtained with WP and WP/SS 70/30 (about 25 cm). In addition, the higher temperature peaks were achieved with WP. This is due to the higher char concentration in the combustion/gasication zone close to the grate compared to that obtained with SS because of ash diluting effect and lower bed density (Table 1). Table 2 reports the operating conditions for all gasication experiments performed and the corresponding results. As may be seen, for the same ER value, the presence of sewage sludge led to a lower specic dry gas production in Nm3/kg feedstock and this is clearly due to higher moisture and ash contents of the SS. Besides, the major combustible gaseous products were CO, H2, CH4 and C2H6 and their total percentage remains almost constant when ER increases from 0.15 to 0.25 but decreases with the increase of SS

1200 1100 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Fig. 2. Average temperature proles at the stationary state along the gasier for the different feedstocks and ER = 0.25 (average bed height 50 cm).

content with an associated decrease of LHV. This reduction of combustible gas content is mainly due to CO content reduction in the producer gas. In fact, the rise of sewage sludge content in the blends led to a marked reduction in CO content of about 65% which was followed by an increase of CO2 content of about 45%. The reduction in CO content followed by an increase in CO2 content in the gas was also observed by Pinto et al. [10] during cogasication of sewage sludge with straw pellets in a uidized-bed gasier. In this case, it was supposed that the presence of sewage sludge reversed the Boudouard reaction (C + CO2 = 2CO) and that char derived from sewage sludge was less reactive toward CO2 than that derived from straw pellets [10]. However, to explain the CO and CO2 concentration differences, it should be kept in mind that in an updraft gasier the composition of producer gas depends strongly on the products of the pyrolysis reactions. Shao et al. [13] and Thipkhunthod et al. [14] have reported studies on the characteristics and the product gas composition of pyrolysing sewage sludge using TGA-FTIR analysis. The main decomposition or pyrolysis of SS starts slowly at about 200 C, it reaches the peak at about 300320 C and then ceased at $550 C. The gas released from the pyrolysis in the range of 200550 C of SS consists essentially of CO2 and H2O, small quantities of both saturated and unsaturated light hydrocarbons and an insignicant quantity of CO [13]. Experimental studies carried out on the pyrolysis behaviour of cellulosic materials [1517] have showed that their thermal decomposition generally occurred in the same temperature range of that observed for SS (200450 C) with a peak at about 370 390 C. The gas product consisted essentially of H2O, CO2, CO and small quantities of hydrogen, methane and C2-hydrocarbons. Ohlemiller et al. [15] have observed that the contents of CO2 and CO produced from thermal decomposition of red pine and white oak samples under nitrogen atmosphere was 1012 and 12 vol.%, respectively. Pyrolysis tests of beechwood performed by Di Blasi et al. [16] in a laboratory scale updraft gasier in the temperature range of 300400 C showed a gas product with average CO2 and CO concentrations of about 37 and 17 vol.%, respectively. Consequently, the differences in the gas composition, principally in terms of CO and CO2 concentration, between WP and SS can be mainly explained on the basis of the different composition of gas released during the pyrolysis and, secondary, on the basis of the different char to the Boudouard reaction. As shown in Table 2, the average volumetric concentrations of the dry producer gas obtained with WP in the ER range of 0.15 0.25 consisted of 2831% CO, 8.59% CO2, 67% H2, 1.82% CH4, 1.31.6% C2-hydrocarbons and about 51% N2. It is worth noting that these gas compositions are very close to that obtained by Di Blasi et al. [16] in a lab-scale updraft gasier with beechwood pellets at ER = 0.190.23 and to that measured in a larger scale plant (1.5 MW updraft wood gasier [18]). Also, the dry gas heating values obtained with wood pellets (6:3 5:8 MJ=Nm3 dry ) are similar as that reported for industrial scale reactors [16]. As may be observed in Table 2, the presence of SS led to a increase in CnHm concentrations that was accompanied by a decrease of both CH4 and H2 concentrations. This can be due to the higher temperatures reached in the pyrolysis zone with WP which clearly favoured the destruction of heavier gaseous hydrocarbons accompanied by formation of lighter compounds such as CH4 and H2. These results are in accordance with those of Pinto et al. [10] cogasication studies of straw pellets mixed with sewage sludge, although experimental conditions were quite different from those used in the present paper. In Fig. 3 the effects of ER and SS content on the production of dry gas and dry fuel gas per weight of daf feedstock are reported. As shown, for each feedstock the total dry gas yield increased linearly with the rise of ER. This behaviour is attributable to the greater production of gas in the initial devolatilization, which is more

490 Table 2 Experimental results of gasication tests. Feedstock Wet feed rate (kg/h) ER Dry product gas/feed (Nm3/kg) Dry gas composition (vol.%) H2 CO CH4 Total CnHm C2H6 C3H8 n-C4H10 C2H4 C3H6 1-C4H8 Combustible gases CO2 N2 (+O2 traces) LHVMJ=Nm3 dry CGE (%) ycarbon (%)
a

M. Seggiani et al. / Fuel 93 (2012) 486491

100% WP 3.38 (3.08)a 0.15 0.98 6.3 30.9 1.92 2.13 1.34 0.16 0.03 0.25 0.21 0.14 41.3 8.6 50.1 6.29 40.3 54.4 0.20 1.27 7.1 28.5 2.04 1.87 1.13 0.13 0.03 0.26 0.20 0.12 39.5 8.5 52.0 5.98 49.2 65.5 0.25 1.56 6.0 29.0 1.89 1.97 1.03 0.11 0.03 0.31 0.24 0.25 39.0 9.1 51.9 5.82 59.7 84.1

30 w/w% SS 3.10 (2.44)a 0.15 0.80 5.0 21.0 1.93 4.56 2.58 0.42 0.12 0.41 0.40 0.63 32.5 12.8 54.7 5.79 39.2 53.1 0.20 1.01 4.3 16.4 1.99 4.70 2.68 0.43 0.14 0.44 0.41 0.60 27.4 14.5 58.1 5.25 44.4 62.9 0.25 1.32 4.5 18.5 1.93 4.42 2.46 0.38 0.10 0.47 0.43 0.61 29.8 14.9 55.3 5.38 59.3 85.2

70 w/w% SS 2.87 (1.77)a 0.15 0.64 4.9 14.2 1.74 4.96 2.68 0.59 0.16 0.51 0.56 0.48 25.8 14.4 59.8 4.98 33.5 47.6 0.20 0.81 3.5 11.4 1.53 4.51 2.27 0.49 0.16 0.44 0.46 0.69 20.9 16.4 62.7 4.10 35.2 58.4 0.25 1.07 3.9 15.0 1.66 4.92 2.56 0.54 0.17 0.48 0.47 0.70 25.5 15.5 59.0 4.85 55.1 84.2

100% SS 3.50 (1.71)a 0.15 0.51 4.4 11.2 1.10 4.40 2.17 0.63 0.26 0.46 0.56 0.32 21.1 12.7 66.2 3.96 21.0 39.1 0.20 0.64 3.9 9.9 0.87 3.78 1.65 0.51 0.19 0.46 0.57 0.40 18.5 11.8 69.7 3.32 22.2 44.2 0.25 0.82 3.8 9.6 0.84 4.32 1.65 0.46 0.18 0.64 0.60 0.79 18.6 13.4 68.0 3.37 28.9 62.2

Dry ash free feedstock ow rate.

rapid at higher ER, i.e. at higher temperatures, because higher air ow rates promoted the combustion reactions, and also to the enhancement of the endothermic char gasication reactions. Moreover, as the temperature increases, the tar cracking reactions are favoured with the resulting decrease of the same and the gas yield increases. Since the content of combustible gases remained almost constant with ER (Table 2) for the same feedstock, the ER increase from 0.15 to 0.25 led to higher fuel gas production and, consequently, to higher energy conversion (higher CGE values). Consequently, the optimal value of ER was found to be 0.25 for all the tested feedstocks. In may be also observed in Fig. 3 that, for the same ER value, the total dry gas production per weight of daf feedstock was almost constant independently of the SS content. This can be attributed to the volatile matter and carbon xed contents in daf feedstocks (about 90 and 10 wt.%, respectively, for SS and 81 and 19 wt.%, respectively, for WP). The lower volatile matter content in daf WP seemed to be compensated by the higher temperatures reached with WP and WP/SS 70/30 (Fig. 2) which promoted the devolatilization and gasication reactions and tar cracking. The reduction of fuel gas yield with the increase of sewage sludge content is mainly due to the marked reduction of CO content

which was not compensated by the increase of C2C4 hydrocarbons content. Consequently, a rise of SS content led to a lower energy recovery (lower CGE values). Fig. 4 shows the mass yields, expressed as percentages of the initial dry ash free mass of feedstock fed, of gas, char and liquid. Char represents the ash free solid residue collected and weighed at the completion of the process. Liquid mainly includes all the condensable organic products, the water formed and a small quantity of NH3 in the case of SS blends as reported by Pinto et al. [10], collected in the wet scrubber and ltration systems. The quantity of produced liquid was not experimentally determined but calculated from mass balance on gasier. As shown, when ER was increased from 0.15 to 0.25 the liquid production decreased mainly in favour of the gas production, while the char production slightly decreased. These trends are in agreement with those reported in several biomass gasication studies [8,19] where low values of ER (<0.2) produced high tar content gas. For the same ER value, the liquid production increased with SS content and this can be attributed to the lower thermal proles in the upper gasier zone and more limited pyrolysis zones obtained with SS and WP/SS 30/70 that reduced tar cracking reactions resulting increase of liquid yield mainly at the expense of gas yield.

Fig. 3. Effects of equivalence ratio and sludge content on total dry gas yield and fuel gas yield on dry ash free feedstock.

Fig. 4. Product distribution based on daf feedstock fed (wt.%) as a function of ER and SS content (w/w%).

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Varying ER from 0.15 to 0.25 the ycarbon increased (Table 2). This is due to higher oxygen quantity introduced into the reactor that promoted the char combustion reactions. Besides, the higher temperatures achieved accelerated the devolatilization reactions and favoured the char gasication and tar cracking reactions resulting increase of conversion of carbon into gaseous products. For the same ER value, ycarbon generally decreased when the SS content was increased (Table 2) and this can be attributed to higher liquid production at the expense of gas observed in SS gasication tests (Fig. 4). These results are in accordance with those reported by Di Blasi et al. [16] and Many et al. [8] concerning the effect of the equivalent ratio on the gasication of beechwood in a updraft gasier and of dried sewage-sludge in a bubbling-uidised bed gasier, respectively.

making air distribution difcult and the gasication process very unstable. Acknowledgements This work has been carried out thanks to the nancial support of CISPEL Toscana and Tuscany Region Direzione Generale delle Politiche Territoriali e Ambientali, Settore Riuti e Boniche and to the operative support of Italprogetti Engineering S.p.A. (Italy) that have permitted of performing the gasication tests in its pilot-scale gasication plant. Thanks are also due to some undergraduate students of chemical engineering at the University of Pisa for their help in carrying out the tests. References
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4. Conclusions Because limited information is available about sewage sludge cogasication with woody biomass in updraft xed-bed, this work examined the effect of two important parameters, sewage sludge content and ER, on the gas yield and composition, the average cold gas efciency and the product distribution in a pilot scale updraft gasication plant. For each feedstock tested, the rise of ER from 0.15 to 0.25 resulted in the production of more gas with almost constant LHV allowing to higher cold gas efciencies. Compared with wood pellets gasication, the addition of sewage sludge with 20 wt.% moisture gave rise to a decreasing gas yield due to its higher ash and moisture content, and an increasing of liquid yield due to lower temperature proles observed in the pyrolysis zone that did not favoured the tar cracking. The use of sewage sludge led to higher concentrations of C2C4 hydrocarbons in product gas which did not compensate for the marked reduction of CO content followed by an increase in CO2 release. This led to a decrease in gas LHV from about 6 (with 100 wt.% WP) to 3:5 MJ=Nm3 dry (with 100 wt.% SS). At the optimal equivalent ratio of 0.25, the increase of sewage sludge content in wood pellets blends from 0 to 100 w/w% led to a reduction of dry gas yield from 1.56 to 0.82 Nm3/kg of feedstock fed and a lowering of cold gas efciency from 60 to about 30%. However, up to 70 w/w% of SS in wood pellets blend the decrease of gasication performance was acceptable (gas yield 1.07 Nm3/kg of feedstock; gas LHV 4:9 MJ=Nm3 dry and CGE of 55%). In conclusion, the results obtained are encouraging for the use of sewage sludge, also with 20 wt.% moisture, mixed with wood pellets in existing updraft gasication installations. On the basis of the results, sewage sludge content should not exceed 50% (w/w) as higher concentrations lead to a marked reduction of gas yield mainly in favour of an increase of liquid (condensate + tar) production. In addition, because of the low ash fusion temperatures and high ash content of the sludge, several phenomena such as slagging and an excessive clinker formation can occur in the oxidation zone