(52g) Bio-Drying: A Sustainable Approach for Enhancing the Pre-Treatment Process and Thermal Properties of Green Waste

The potential for thermal recovery of waste is gaining impetus among researchers and industries across the globe especially in many developed countries. However, in processing waste for energy recovery process, the type and nature of input waste materials, particularly those with high moisture content, have a significant impact in determining the quality, environmental profile of the waste technology as well as the thermal properties of the final product. Bio-drying, as a waste to energy conversion technology, tends to reduce moisture content of waste while maintaining the energy content of the processed waste. The current study investigates the effect of input materials (plastics, sorted waste papers, pruning waste and food waste) on the energy content of waste material with subsequent implication on biogenic content of the material by bio-drying process. Preliminary results established a positive correlation between biogenic and energy content of the input materials with some variations observed between food and paper waste. High biogenic content was reported for plastic waste whereas paper waste had the highest non-biogenic content of 9%. Further analysis after the bio-drying process show that, depending on the proportion of the different waste materials, the biogenic and energy content of the final material differed indicating the significant of the amount of some materials in the waste mix with respect to others. Among the waste components plastic was identified as the major contributor to high biogenic and energy content, whereas paper was considered as the lowest contributor. Additionally, high proportion of food waste in the waste mix indicated a slight difference in biogenic and energy content; on the other hand, the same proportion of paper in the waste mix showed similar biogenic content with some variation of energy content observed. This research revealed that the combination of green waste of high moisture content with other waste materials by bio-drying process would offer alternative waste management approach and help mitigate environmental pollution from the disposal of biodegradable waste.

Keywords: Bio-drying; Biogenic content; Energy content;