Combustion of municipal solid waste in a pilot scale fluidized bed combustor

Abstract

Combustion study of municipal solid waste combustion in a pilot scale fluidized bed combustor had been carried out. The work was aimed at demonstrating sustainable combustion of municipal solid waste by employing operating parameters gained from previous studies. The primary and secondary air factor used were AF = 0.8 and AF = 0.6 respectively. The fluidization number was 5Umf and both in-bed and freeboard region temperature distributions were monitored continuously. Results on the combustion studies revealed that the initial bed temperature could be sustained due to high thermal capacity of sand but later dropped due to problem related to the mixing of bulky and heterogeneous components of municipal solid waste and sand.