Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821

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Energy Conversion and Management

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Energy recycling from sewage sludge by producing solid biofuel

with hydrothermal carbonization
Peitao Zhao a,b,⇑, Yafei Shen b,1, Shifu Ge a,2, Kunio Yoshikawa b,1
a
Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, NO. 2 Sipailou, XuanWu
District, Nanjing 210096, PR China
b
Department of Environmental Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, G5-8 4259 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 226-8503, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The hydrothermal (HT) conversion has been proposed to produce nitrogen, chlorine free solid biofuel or
Received 19 September 2013 liquid fertilizer from high moisture and nitrogen content bio-wastes, such as municipal solid waste
Accepted 22 November 2013 (MSW), mycelial waste, sewage sludge and paper sludge. However, the energy and economic efficiency
of this process has not been fully investigated yet. This work focuses on energy recycling from sewage
sludge by producing solid biofuel with HT carbonization, in order to optimize the operating parameters
Keywords: and evaluate the energy efficiency of this fuel production process. The effect of the HT temperature and
Sewage sludge
holding time on the biofuel recovering ratio, calorific value and energy recovery rate was investigated.
Hydrothermal carbonization
Solid biofuel
This evaluation fully considered the effect of the HT conditions, mechanical dewatering, thermal drying,
Biofuel recovery and biofuel recovery ratio. Moreover, the energy consumption of sludge thermal drying was introduced
Energy efficiency to illustrate the economic efficiency of the HT biofuel production process more intuitively. The results
show that the HT biofuel production process was more cost-effective than the conventional thermal dry-
ing. The HT temperature was the most important parameter to affect the biofuel properties. The carbon
content of solid biofuel kept increasing both with HT temperature and holding time, resulting in an
increase in the calorific value of biofuel; whereas, the biofuel recovering ratio a, defined as the mass ratio
of solid biofuel to raw sludge, also dropped causing a reduction in the energy recovery rate. After the HT
temperature was above 200 °C, the energy recovery rate was around 40%. A moderate condition–HT tem-
perature of 200 °C and holding time of 30 min was suggested to produce solid biofuel from sewage sludge
with an energy recovery rate of 50%. Practically, it is better to improve the intensity of mechanical dewa-
tering to remove more water from the HT products in order to improve thermal efficiency.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction indicating that the other sludge treatment facilities with a capacity
of at least 5.18 million tons dried sludge has to be built to meet the
Municipal wastewater treatment results in generating huge environmental requirements in the following years. In a global
amount of sewage sludge, which requires proper and environmen- context, it is organizationally, technically, and economically hardly
tally acceptable management before final disposal. The manage- possible to prevent or strongly reduce the amount of municipal
ment of municipal sewage sludge (SS) is a difficult and expensive wastewater because of the rapid urbanization, industrialization,
problem to solve for many countries. In China, about 20.76 million and growth in population [3]. Besides that, the presence of toxic
tons of SS with a water content of 80% has been produced in 2010 pollutants in municipal wastewater cannot be avoided because a
[1]. Moreover, this amount will be much huger at the end of 2015 large part of these toxics originates from diffuse sources. Accord-
according to the China’s 12th Five-Year Construction Plan for Na- ingly, it is believed that the sludge output would remain increasing
tional Urban Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Facilities [2], gradually in the coming decades [4], and its quality will not change
significantly in the future. SS will therefore remain a permanent
waste treatment problem requiring an appropriate solution [5].
⇑ Corresponding author at: Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and
Currently, bio-energy is an excellent energy recycling technol-
Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast
ogy with bright prospect, giving its ability to recover energy from
University, NO. 2 Sipailou, XuanWu 9 District, Nanjing 210096, PR China.
Tel./fax: +81 45 924 5586. waste biomass [1,6,7]. The hydrothermal (HT) conversion, which
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Zhao), [email protected] involves the application of heat and pressure to treat biomass in
(Y. Shen), [email protected] (S. Ge), [email protected] (K. Yoshikawa). an aqueous medium, was verified as an effective way to densify
1
Tel./fax: +81 45 924 5586. the energy content of moist biomass without prior drying [8]. For
2
Tel.: +86 25 8379 2379; fax: +86 25 5771 4489.

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.11.026
816 P. Zhao et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821

sludge, it aims to disintegrate the sludge and result in the forma- drying. However, few of them focused on the energy and economic
tion and accumulation of dissolved products [9]. During the reac- efficiency of this process by fully considering the HT operating con-
tion, solid decomposition was significantly affected by reaction ditions, dehydration performance, consequent thermal drying and
temperature rather than reaction time. Higher temperature re- biofuel recovery ratio, etc., which are very crucial for process opti-
sulted in higher solids conversion to solid biofuel [10]. mization and commercialization of this technology. Therefore, this
The HT conversion has bright perspective with three main mer- study mainly investigated on the mass and energy balance of solid
its: (1) largely improving the dewaterability; (2) dramatically biofuel production from SS by HT. The effect of HT temperature and
reduction in volume, especially for the municipal solid waste holding time on the biofuel recovering ratio, calorific value of solid
(MSW), sawdust, SS and leaves; (3) energy densification. Energy biofuel, water removal performance, and energy recovery rate
contents of the solid biofuel from primary SS carbonized at 140– were fully taken into account to evaluate the energy efficiency.
200 °C for 4 h ranged from 21.5 to 23.31 MJ/kg, and kept increasing
with carbonization [10]. Liu et al. [11] also stated that the energy 2. Materials and methods
densification was increased from 1.34 to 1.66 and 1.33 to 1.55
for coconut fiber and eucalyptus leaves, respectively. The highest 2.1. Experimental procedures
energy yield was achieved at the lowest temperature adopted be-
cause of the relative high biofuel yield. Lu et al. [12] applied HT to In this study, the dewatered activated sludge with a moisture
produce powder-like solid biofuel from Japanese MSW, Indian content of (85.94 ± 0.22)% was taken from a wastewater treatment
MSW and Chinese MSW, at 220 °C and 2.4 MPa for 30 min with a plant in Japan. Its proximate and ultimate analysis results were
lab-scale autoclave facility. It is reported that the volume based shown in Table 1.
heating value (HV) of MSW was improved at around 6.4–9.0 times. Fig. 1 shows a diagram of the HT solid biofuel production pro-
Similar results were also obtained by deriving the data presented cess and an elementary diagram of the experimental facilities. Dur-
by Prawisudha et al. [13], indicating that this volume based energy ing the HT treatment, the sludge pre-mixed with pure water (Wako
density was improved around 4–5 times after the HT pretreatment Pure Chemical Industries, Ltd., Japan) as the mass ratio (wet basis,
in a pilot plant. The product was easily dryable to powdery fuel w.b.) of 2:1 (90 g sludge and 45 g pure water) was loaded into a
with a moisture content of 10% and an average dry basis (d.b.) glass tube with a volume of 500 mL. Subsequently, the glass tube
HV of 20 MJ/kg, as high as that of the low-grade sub-bituminous was put into the reactor, which was heated by an electronic heat
coal. Moreover, they also observed that the chlorine content of jacket. After that, the reactor was sealed and the argon with a pur-
MSW could be reduced from 10,000 ppm (d.b.) to approximately ity of 99.999% was supplied from a cylinder to the reactor in order
2000 ppm (d.b.) resulting from the transformation to water-solu- to create an oxygen free circumstance. The reactor was then heated
ble inorganic chlorine. For the combustion characteristics, it was up to the target temperature and kept constant for a predeter-
stated that the blending of HT pretreated MSW improved devolati- mined period. In this study, the HT temperature and holding time
zation properties of coal and lowers the ignition temperature of ranged from 180 to 240 °C and from 15 to 45 min, respectively.
coal [12,14,15]. He et al. [16] also state that the combustion of solid During the reaction, the mixer was kept stirring with its direction
fuel produced from SS by HT is expected to be easier and more sta- switching every 5 min to ensure the uniformity of reaction temper-
ble than raw sludge because of lower activation energy and pre- ature in the samples. After finishing the reaction, the heater was
exponential factor. The solid fuel is supposed to be clean as about turned off and the residual steam was discharged and cooled down
60% of nitrogen and sulfur within SS can be removed during the HT with a water condenser. When the pressure and temperature fell
conversion. Moisture content was found to affect the HT carboniza- down to the atmospheric and room temperature, the products
tion process; feedstocks with higher initial moisture content re- were taken out from the glass tube and then kept in a bottle for
sulted in lower hydrochar yield [10]. further use. The condensed liquid was collected and mixed with
Most of these works have focused on the feasibility of applying the products from the glass tube. Each condition was repeated at
HT to produce solid biofuel [11,13,17–19], the kinetics and mech- least 3 times as the same procedure and the final products were
anism of HT solid fuel formation [10,20], the biofuel’ characteriza- mixed to reduce the experimental error.
tion [16,21,22], and the biofuels’ combustion characteristics To calculate the recovery rate a of the solid fuel, about 60 g
[7,12,14–16]. They have distinctly verified that the HT was an (dividing into three group) of the pre-mixed products was directly
effective pretreatment process to produce clean solid biofuel from dried in an oven at 105 °C. And another 140 g was taken out to con-
waste biomass by controlling the water content without prior duct the mechanical dewatering in order to evaluate the water

Table 1
The ultimate and proximate analysis of the samples.

Items Raw sludge 180 °C 200 °C 220 °C 240 °C

15 min 30 min 45 min 15 min 30 min 45 min 15 min 30 min 45 min 15 min 30 min 45 min
Ultimate analysis (dry ashes free basis, d.a.f, %)
Cad 51.20 52.19 53.20 55.31 55.07 57.44 59.23 59.31 60.00 62.31 61.29 62.62 67.96
Had 6.64 6.57 6.52 6.69 6.72 6.65 6.68 6.68 6.45 6.29 6.26 5.96 5.71
Nad 8.85 9.08 8.98 9.08 9.29 9.04 7.98 9.03 8.24 8.73 8.95 8.19 8.51
Sad 1.37 1.36 1.39 1.37 1.30 1.26 1.26 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.33 1.29 1.56
a
Oad 31.94 30.81 29.91 27.55 27.62 25.61 24.84 23.80 24.13 21.47 22.17 21.93 16.25
Proximate analysis (air dry basis, %)
Mad 0.99 1.45 1.54 1.61 1.11 1.07 0.99 0.81 1.24 0.29 1.02 0.53 0.48
Vad 78.49 74.47 72.52 69.63 71.16 70.37 67.56 68.94 67.36 66.59 64.63 62.40 57.42
FCad 2.01 2.06 2.77 3.20 3.06 3.19 3.60 3.02 3.79 3.97 5.12 6.66 7.42
Aad 18.51 22.02 23.17 25.56 24.67 25.37 27.85 27.23 26.61 29.23 29.83 30.41 34.68
HVb 4497 4374 4546 4645 4518 4725 4747 4717 4786 4748 4746 4816 4821
a
Calculated from the elements mass balance: O = 100–C–H–N–S.
b
HV: heating value (kcal/kg).
 P. Zhao et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821 817

Fig. 1. Biofuel production process and an elementary diagram of experimental facilities.

removal efficiency of sludge. An elementary diagram of the dewa- liquid, approximately equaling to that of water; cp is the specific
tering device was also shown in Fig. 1 (details about this device can heat capacity of sludge, 1.7 kJ/(kg K) [17]; s is the holding time,
be found in Zhao et al. [1]). Differing from the previous one [1], the hour; Cbulk is the heat capacity of the reactor, 1550 kJ/K; hbulk is
dewatering pressure and time were 0.6 MPa and 12 min respec- the convective heat transfer coefficient; A is the surface area of
tively. During the dewatering process, the filter was collected by the reactor, hbulkA = 0.032 kW/K [23].
a beaker and its weight was measured by an electronic balance After HT, the steam in the reactor was released from saturated
connecting to a computer. After that, the re-dewatered sludge pressure to atmospheric pressure, following with a temperature
was dried by a forced convective dryer, whose operating condition decrease inside the reactor. Assuming that the temperature inside
was air temperature of 30.4 ± 0.4 °C and velocity of 1.34 ± 0.04 m/s the reactor was 373 K when the pressure inside the reactor reached
all the time. During the drying process, the sample weight was to atmospheric pressure, the amount of exhaust steam can be then
continuously measured by an electronic balance ASP-4100 (AS- calculated by Eq. (3):
one, Japan) and was recorded in a computer with .XLS format at
ðmw þ X in Þ  ðHl;HT  Hl;373 Þ þ ms  cp  ðT H  373Þ
6 min interval for further analysis. The drying process stopped
after the sample weight was kept constant for 2 h. ¼ X out  ðHg;HT  Hl;373 Þ ð3Þ

The energy output EHT,out after HT can be estimate as:

2.2. Analytic methods
EHT;out ¼ X out  ðHg;TH  Hl;298 Þ ð4Þ
The variation of the dry basis moisture content (d.b. kg/kg),
The energy consumption of mechanical dewatering was derived
which represents the amount of water contained in 1 kg dry solid,
from a 24 t/d pilot scale plant, which has been continually operated
was used to characterize the water removal ability. This value can
for 2 years.
be easily solved according to the weight loss of the sample.
As for the thermal efficiency of dryer, the energy consumption
Fig. 2 shows the boundary of the mass and energy balance in the
in the commercial plants was about 1.2 kg (steam)/kg (water)
current study. The solid recovering rate a was expressed as the ra-
not including the cost of capital, labor, maintenance, and operating
tio of the HT solid product to the raw sludge (d.b.). The proximate
[24]. At a lab scale (capacity, 100 kg/h), it was around 70–75% for
and ultimate analysis was used to characterize the solid biofuel
gas-agitated double screw type dryer [25] and about 25–62% for
property. The heat consumption in the HT was evaluated according
screw conveyor dryer, a typical values obtained from the falling-
to a batch-type HT equipment composing of a pressurized vessel, a
rate drying period [26]. Fully taking all the above mentioned data
boiler, a control unit, piping and incidental components. The vessel
into account, the thermal efficiency of the conventional drying pro-
was made of SM400B low-carbon steel with a volume of around
cess was assumed to be 70% in this study.
1.5 m3. The heat capacity Cbulk and the heat loss of the reactor have
been theoretically and experimentally evaluated by Namioka et al.
[23]. Ignoring the weight loss and assuming the circumstance tem- 3. Results and discussion
perature is 25 °C, the energy input of the HT can be calculated as:
3.1. Carbonization of sewage sludge
mw  ðHl;HT  Hl;298 Þ þ ðms  cp þ C bulk þ 3600  hbulk  A  sÞ
 ðT H  298Þ ¼ X in  ðHg;HT  Hl;HT Þ ð1Þ Table 1 presents the proximate and ultimate analysis of the raw
sludge and the HT products. The carbon content was increased
EHT;in ¼ X in  ðHg;HT  Hl;298 Þ ð2Þ from 51.2% to 68.0% and the corresponding HV was also improved
from 4497 to 4821 kcal/kg. He et al. [16] also reported the higher
where EHT,in is the energy input in the HT process; mw, ms is the heating values of SS was increased by at least 11% with the HT con-
water and solid content in the sludge; H is the enthalpy of the version. The HV of the solid fuel produced at 180 °C and 15 min

Fig. 2. Boundary of mass and energy balance calculation in current study.

818 P. Zhao et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821

was lower than that of the raw sludge. This could be explained by acid, which is formed in significant amounts during the cellulose
that the volatile dissolution but not the SS carbonization played the degradation, yielding primarily CO2 and H2O, was also one likely
most important role resulting in HV decrease. After lengthening source for CO2 formation [29].
the holding time, the SS carbonization became more and more Many reaction mechanisms would contribute to the coalifica-
important, the HV of the fuels were then improved by the HT con- tion in HT conversion, whereas more detailed reaction pathways
version. The HV was increased with both the HT temperature and and kinetics are largely unknown except for the HT degradation
holding time. However, the energetic retention efficiency was de- of glucose. According to previous studies on hydrochar formation
creased because of the reduction of biofuel yields, which were de- mechanisms [16,18,21,30–35], the hydrocarbon can be obtained
creased both with increasing the HT temperature and holding time. via three main reaction pathways: (1) direct solid-solid conversion
Moreover, high HT temperature and long holding time means high of biomass materials (termed ‘‘char’’) undergoing devolatilization,
energy consumption in HT conversion. Therefore, the process opti- condensation, dehydration and decarboxylation; (2) polymeriza-
mization should consider the energy efficiency of each separated tion of dissolved intermediates degraded from the original biomass
process, including the HT conversion, mechanically dewatering, towards polyfurans; (3) carbonization via further intermolecular.
and thermal drying, in order to maximize the energy recovery rate.
Fig. 3 illustrated the coalification band of the upgraded SS. This 3.2. Mass balance of HT solid biofuel production
coalification was mainly attributed to the hydrolysis reaction
resulting from the heat, pressure, and time [19]. The quality of solid Fig. 4 shows a typical mass balance of the HT solid biofuel pro-
biofuels produced by the HT could be compared to the lignite or duction process run under a temperature of 200 °C and holding
even sub-bituminous, depending on the reaction severity. Mass time of 30 min. The initial ratio of sludge to water was 2:1 with
balance analyses indicated that the feedstock carbonization re- about 90.3 g SS and 45.2 g water in the parent materials. Accord-
tained a significant fraction of carbon in the solid parts [27]. Both ingly, the solid content of the parent materials was 9.4%, about
the atomic ratio of H/C and O/C kept decreasing with the HT tem- 12.7 g. After the HT, about 132.4 g (97.8% of the initial weight)
perature; yet, the degree was relevant to both the HT conditions product was obtained and the other 3.0 g was lost resulting from
and the feedstock. All the HT products exhibited lower H/C and the possible weight loss and uncondensed gases. Following with
O/C ratios than the initial materials, owing to the evolution of a mechanically dewatering, most of the liquid (about 104.6 g,
H2O and CO2 due to the dehydration and decarboxylation reactions accounting for 77.2%) within the HT product was removed and
[28]. Dehydration is generally explained by elimination of hydroxyl 27.8 g dewatered residues (occupying 20.5%) was obtained. If not
groups, while decarboxylation is the thermal cracking of the long accounting the water added in the HT stage, about 60 g water
chain carboxylic acids. Chemical dehydration significantly carbon- (4.7 kg water/kg solid) was removed by the combination of HT
izes biomass by lowering the H/C and O/C ratios [20]. According to treatment and mechanical dewatering. It indicates the HT treat-
the composition of the hydrochar produced from municipal wastes, ment was an effective solution to improve sludge dewaterability.
Berge et al. [27] concluded that both the dehydration and decar- After the thermal drying, about 11.58 g HT solid biofuel was ac-
boxylation occurred during carbonization, resulting in structures quired, representing 8.6% of the total sample weight. The biofuel
with high aromaticity. Longer HT holding time seemed to decrease recovery rate a was solved as 91.3% at this operating condition.
oxygen containing functional groups while carbon aromaticity Due to the avoidance of the forced evaporation of water, the energy
structure increased, thereby rendering hydrochars highly hydro- consumption in HT was expected to be largely reduced comparing
phobic [16]. The evolution of the H/C and O/C atomic ratios follows with the traditional SS thermal drying.
essentially the path of a dehydration process, similar to that previ- Table 2 listed a mass balance analysis of all the operating con-
ously observed for the HT transformation of saccharides such as ditions mentioned in this study. It indicated that the weight loss
glucose, sucrose or starch [22]. Significant decarboxylation only ap- of all these samples was lower than 3.5%. The sludge dewatering
peared after plenty of water has been generated [20]. The dehydr- performance kept improving both with the HT temperature and
oxylation and condensation reaction are regarded as possible paths holding time as indicated by the decrease in ‘‘dewatered residuals’’.
for water sources. Above 150 °C, the carboxyl and carbonyl groups For the sample treated under 240 °C, the amount of ‘‘dewatered
were rapidly degraded to release CO2 and CO respectively. Early residuals’’ did not always decrease with the holding time. One pos-
observations concluded that the HT decomposition of the formic sible reason was the sludge particles were too fine. Although the
hydrophobic was improved [16], no effective porosity was formed
during the mechanical dewatering, resulting in an increase in the
resistance to filtration [36]. The other one was the O-ring placed
in the connection increased the resistance to filtration and reduced
the pressure acting on the sample surface due to the small volume
of sample.
In virtue of the improvement of dewaterability, the amount of
‘‘evaporated liquid’’ was largely reduced for HT pretreated sample.
The energy density of the SS was enhanced by the HT with the
exception of the sample treated at 180 °C and 15 min. Its reason
has been discussed in Section 3.1. The energy density was im-
proved continuously; whereas the fuel recovery ratio kept decreas-
ing both with increasing the HT temperature and holding time.
This result implies that there existed an optimal operating condi-
tion to maximize the energy output of HT solid biofuel production
process. Moreover, the energy density and corresponding fuel
recovery ratio must be taken into account when evaluating the
economic efficiency.
All these data show that most of the liquid could be removed by
combining the HT pretreatment with mechanical dewatering prior
Fig. 3. The coalification band of sewage sludge with HT treatment. to thermal drying. After the HT pretreatment and dewatering, the
 P. Zhao et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821 819

Fig. 4. Evaluation of biofuel recovery from sludge by employing HT in Lab-scale.

Table 2
Evaluation of mass balance of solid fuel production by HT.

Samples Input (%) Hydrothermal (%) Dewatering (%) Thermal drying (%) HV (kcal/kg) a (%)
Gas + loss HT products Separated liquid Dewatered residuals Evaporated liquid Solid fuel
Raw sludge 100 – – 29.70 70.30 56.24 14.06 4497 100
180 °C
15 min 100 1.36 98.64 68.08 30.56 21.48 9.09 4374 96.94
30 min 100 1.89 98.11 72.89 25.23 16.45 8.77 4546 93.91
45 min 100 1.92 98.08 77.35 20.74 12.26 8.48 4645 90.59
200 °C
15 min 100 3.06 96.94 74.23 22.72 14.00 8.72 4518 93.26
30 min 100 2.22 97.78 77.24 20.54 11.99 8.55 4725 91.27
45 min 100 1.29 98.71 80.11 18.60 10.31 8.29 4747 88.40
220 °C
15 min 100 2.42 97.58 76.68 20.89 12.38 8.52 4717 90.75
30 min 100 3.47 96.53 77.81 18.72 10.60 8.11 4786 86.60
45 min 100 2.65 97.35 81.03 16.32 8.41 7.91 4748 84.43
240 °C
15 min 100 2.12 97.88 80.73 17.15 9.18 7.97 4746 85.16
30 min 100 1.98 98.02 79.40 18.62 10.94 7.68 4816 82.07
45 min 100 3.24 96.76 78.51 18.25 10.93 7.33 4821 78.14

Fig. 5. Energy balance of solid biofuel production by HT pretreatment.

wet basis HV of the products was largely improved to achieve the 47.6% of the energy generated from the solid biofuel combustion
self-sustaining combustion. could be recovered in the form of heat or power; the other 52.4%
could be utilized to run the fuel production process, including
3.3. Energy balance the HT treatment, mechanical dewatering (press filter) and ther-
mal drying (forced evaporation). Moreover, it is noteworthy to
Fig. 5 illustrates an energy balance of the proposed process mention that this calculation assumed that the water residing in
(capacity 1 t/batch) producing solid biofuel under a temperature the solid after mechanical dewatering was removed by forced
of 200 °C and holding time of 30 min. It clearly shows that the evaporation and the reactor was preheated every time. However,
HT pretreatment could be used to produce solid biofuel to recover the reactor was required pretreating only once in a sequence oper-
energy from the high moist SS. Under the current condition, about ating process. Besides, the residing water was typically removed to
820 P. Zhao et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 815–821

Table 3
Evaluation of energy recovery from solid fuel production by HT.

Samples Input in HTa Input in HT Dewatering Thermal Total inputa Total input Total output ba (%) b (%)
(MJ) (MJ) (MJ) drying(MJ) (103 MJ) (103 MJ) (103 MJ)
Raw sludge 0 0 0 3181.93 3.18 – 2655.57 19.82 –
180 °C
15 min 603.73 331.47 6.43 1208.00 1.82 1.55 2503.90 27.39 38.26
30 min 608.79 336.52 6.43 933.41 1.57 1.28 2574.71 38.57 49.37
45 min 613.85 341.58 6.43 699.43 1.34 1.05 2539.71 46.89 57.85
200 °C
15 min 639.04 331.88 6.43 797.07 1.46 1.14 2541.51 42.02 54.37
30 min 644.75 337.58 6.43 683.92 1.35 1.03 2602.43 47.57 59.64
45 min 650.46 343.29 6.43 590.81 1.26 0.94 2534.09 49.65 62.05
220 °C
15 min 674.51 332.39 6.43 704.32 1.40 1.04 2583.54 45.20 58.73
30 min 680.87 338.74 6.43 606.56 1.32 0.95 2560.56 47.14 61.11
45 min 687.23 345.10 6.43 485.31 1.20 0.84 2479.39 50.20 64.65
240 °C
15 min 710.20 333.01 6.43 528.37 1.28 0.87 2526.83 47.84 63.64
30 min 717.21 340.02 6.43 624.35 1.39 0.97 2504.66 42.25 58.41
45 min 724.21 347.03 6.43 621.74 1.40 0.98 2395.38 39.21 56.16
a
Based on the assumption that the reactor was preheated every time.

around 20% by natural drying, which has been demonstrated to be consumption of HT treatment, about half of the energy was con-
improved by the HT pretreatment [37,38]. Therefore, the energy sumed in the reactor preheating. Therefore, it would be better to
consumption could be reduced in practical so that more energy shorten the interval between two batches to save energy.
could be recycled. As indicated in Table 3, about 59.6% of the en-
ergy generated from the biofuel combustion could be recycled
when ignoring the reactor preheating process. 4. Conclusions
In order to illustrate the energy efficiency more intuitively,
Fig. 5 also compares the energy consumption of the conventional This work focused on the mass and energy balance of solid bio-
thermal drying with that of the HT biofuel production process. fuel production from SS by hydrothermal (HT) carbonization in or-
Obviously, the heat generated from combustion of the dried SS der to optimize the operating parameters. The results show that
could not fulfill the energy demand for water evaporation in con- the HT temperature was the most important parameter to affect
ventional drying. Additional fuel with energy of 5.3 MJ should be the biofuel property. The sludge dewaterability, the carbon content
added in order to treat 1 ton sludge with a moisture content of and heating value of the biofuel were improved with increase of
85.94%. However, in HT process, the water within sludge was re- the HT temperature and hold time; whereas the ratio of the solid
moved mainly by mechanical dewatering, not forced evaporation. biofuel to raw sludge (biofuel recovering rate, a) drops causing a
Only the sensitive heat was required to improve the temperature reduction in the energy recovery ratio. Thus, the process optimiza-
of SS and water under a certain pressure. About 47.6% of the heat tion should fully take into account the dehydration performance,
generated from the biofuel combustion could be recovered. This re- drying performance, biofuel recovering rate a and calorific value
sult indicates that the biofuel production from the high moist SS by to improve the thermal efficiency and lower the cost of biofuel pro-
employing the HT treatment was not only feasible in the view of duction. According to the energy balance, the energy recovery rate
technique, but also cost effective in terms of energy efficiency. In was around 40% after the HT temperature was over 200 °C. To save
a similar process employing the steam explosion to produce solid energy, a moderate condition–HT temperature of 200 °C and hold-
biofuel from SS and leaves, Zhao et al. [1] reported that the energy ing time of 30 min was suggested to produce solid biofuel from SS
consumption of the thermal pretreatment was only about 22% of with an energy recovery rate of 50%.
that of consumed in the conventional thermal drying, which was
consistent with that reported by Namioka et al. [17]. Acknowledgement
Table 3 shows the energy consumption and recovery under var-
ious operating conditions. After the HT temperature was above This work was financially supported by the State Scholarship
200 °C, the energy recovery rate was around 40%. If not taking Fund of China under Grant Nos. 2011609050, 201206230168, and
the reactor preheating into account, the energy recovery rate was National Science and Technology Major Project of China (Water
close to 60%. Before the temperature reaching 240 °C, it kept Program) (2010ZX07319-002). This research work was also sup-
increasing with the HT temperature and holding time. The thermal ported by Strategic China–Japan Cooperative Program on ‘‘Science
drying process is the most energy-intensive one during the biofuel and Technology (S&T) for Environmental Conservation and Con-
production, accounting for about 70% of the total energy consump- struction of a Society with Less Environmental Burden’’ of the Na-
tion. Thus, one of the efficient ways to save energy was to improve tional Nature Science Foundation of China and Japan Science and
the intensity of mechanical dewatering to remove more water Technology Agency (No. 21161140329).
from HT products. The other one is to lengthen the dewatering
time. Practically, the pressure for press filter and time were about
1.2 MPa and 2 h, respectively. In this case, the moisture content of References
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