Recycling and Energy Recovery by Municipal Solid Waste Carbonization Fuel System

Abstract

Since it is difficult to generate electricity in small to medium sized MSW treatment facilities less than 100 t/day from an economic point of view, it is important to increase recycling ratio and recovery of unused energy through waste-to-fuel technologies such as RDF or carbonized fuel. In July 2015 when Saikai city carbonization center was completed, carbonization fuel system was introduced. It is a facility of 30 t/day capacity and adopts the first domestic system that converts MSW into carbonized fuel and utilizes it as an alternate fuel of coal in power companies. The properties of carbonized fuel obtained in 2 years operation were 16,000 kJ/kg or more of calorific value, approximately 3,000 mg/kg-DB of chlorine concentration, and 224 of HGI, which showed high crushability compared with coal. Also the leaching and contents tests, and dioxin concentrations were within the regulation values. In addition, during the spontaneous ignition tests at 100 degrees C, carbonized fuel did not ignite. The estimation of energy recovery ratio from actual data showed that 18% of the power generation by carbonized fuel was equivalent to 16 to 21% of power generations by RDF, which were superior to 1 to 13% of simple incinerations.