Investigation on thermal and kinetic characteristics during Pyrolysis and co-Pyrolysis of recovered fuels obtained from municipal solid waste in China

Alternative fuels, such as municipal solid waste (MSW) tend to play an increasingly important role in Chinese energy supply. Gasifying fuels derived from MSW have the potential of covering a significant part of the future demand on gasification capacities. However, their pyrolysis behaviour was not clear due to that the reactions during co-pyrolysis of the MSW serval fractions have not yet been fully investigated. In this paper, thermal behavior of pork, polypropylene and their blends were investigated by thermogravimetry under pyrolysis conditions via the non-isothermal thermogravimetric analysis. The pyrolysis and co-pyrolysis kinetics characteristics of the waste samples was investigated at a temperature range of 50 to 1000 °C with the heating rate of rate of 10, 20, 40 °Cmin-1 and for particle sizes less than 74 μm. The results indicated that pyrolysis rate of pork was hindered by polypropylene. Negative synergistic effects on mixture decomposition was observed. Weight loss of mixture were lower than that calculated from individual samples for pork and polypropylene. The apparent activation energy were obtained through Kissinger and Ozawa methods for the samples. The results indicated that more energy for blends to be decomposed during co-pyrolysis.