Effect of granulation on chlorine-release behavior during municipal solid waste incineration

Xinlei Xie; Wei Wu; Jiali Fu; Linwen Di; Changsheng Bu; Guiling Xu; Junguang Meng; Guilin Piao; Xinye Wang

doi:10.1039/d3ra04615j

Effect of granulation on chlorine-release behavior during municipal solid waste incineration

RSC Adv. 2023 Aug 21;13(35):24854-24864. doi: 10.1039/d3ra04615j. eCollection 2023 Aug 11.

Authors

Xinlei Xie¹, Wei Wu², Jiali Fu¹, Linwen Di¹, Changsheng Bu¹, Guiling Xu¹, Junguang Meng¹, Guilin Piao¹, Xinye Wang^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Materials Cycling and Pollution Control, School of Energy and Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University Nanjing 210023 China.
² Nanjing Environment Group Co., Ltd Nanjing 210026 China.
³ Zhenjiang Institute for Innovation and Development, Nanjing Normal University Zhenjiang 212050 China.

Abstract

The preparation of refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is an effective and simple means of rural municipal solid waste utilization. The release of chlorine during RDF combustion is important as it causes high-temperature corrosion and pollutants emission such as HCl, dioxins, etc. In this paper, constant-temperature and increasing-temperature combustion experiments were carried out using an electrically heating furnace to analyse the effects of granulation (pressure and additives) on the release of chlorine in particles. During the constant-temperature combustion below 800 °C, only organic chlorine was released from the RDF. The increase of granulation pressure from 1 MPa to 10 MPa did not affect the total amount of chlorine release, but delayed the organic chlorine release by increasing the gas diffusion resistance. During the constant-temperature combustion above 900 °C, inorganic chlorine was released as well. The increase of granulation pressure enhanced the inorganic chlorine release significantly by promoting the reactants contact. During the increasing-temperature combustion, the increase of granulation pressure delayed the organic chlorine release as well but inhibited the inorganic chlorine release. This was mainly attributed to the slow temperature rise to 900 °C, during which the inherent calcium in the RDF reacted with silicon and aluminium, resulting in less reactants for an inorganic chlorine release reaction. Three calcium-based additives were used to inhibit chlorine release. CaCO₃ showed no dechlorination effect, and CaO showed better dechlorination effect than Ca(OH)₂. For the constant-temperature combustion at 900 °C, the addition of CaO with a Ca/Cl ratio of 2 achieved a dechlorination efficiency of over 90%, with little influence from the granulation pressure. For the increasing-temperature combustion, the granulation pressure had a significant influence on CaO dechlorination effectiveness. Only at a granulation pressure as high as 10 MPa, did the addition of CaO with the Ca/Cl ratio of 2.5 achieve a dechlorination efficiency of 95%.