Thermochemical Conversion of Municipal Solid Waste to Produce Fuel and Reduce Waste

A 250 dm3 pyrolysis reactor was designed, fabricated and tested for performance. The feedstock for the reactor was 12kg dried household refuse (a mixture of food waste, fruits/vegetable, paper, plastic and textile materials). The experiment was replicated four times each with the same percentages of waste components in the household refuse. The experiments were performed between 5000C and 6500C. A waste volume reduction of about 65% on the average was achieved after the experiments and pyrolytic oil of between 5.27kg and 6.85kg was obtained. The residues obtained were mainly char (25%) which showed that the process has a potential for the treatment of municipal solid waste and is a good technology for resource recovery.

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