Thermal utilization of residues and industrial wastes in combination with fossil fuels and/or biomass will become a very important factor in future energy production in Europe from the viewpoint of environmental aspects, the careful use of resources on fossil fuels as well as developing/increasing new market segments for decentralized energy production. But also in existing markets and technologies like iron and steel or cement production the utilization of residues or wastes might play a more important role in future. The main goal of the project "Advanced Combustion and Gasification of Fuel Blends and Diagnostics of Alkali and Heavy Metal Release" was the investigation and development of data and technologies for commercial use of wastes in industrial applications.
The basis for our investigation on industrial wastes was the availability of various products suitable for combustion and /or gasification. In the project we have focussed the work mainly on wastes from textile industries as well as waste plastics from different sources.
The necessary facilities for processing the wastes (i.e. sorting, separating, grinding, blending, etc.) were available at the partners. Extensive test series were performed in order to find an optimized preparation process either for single wastes or groups of wastes under consideration of economic and feasibility aspects.
Investigation on fuel blend combustion contained the supply of high quality fuel blends from the partners involved in the preparation and production of these blends. Most necessary combustion facilities were already available at the companies/institutes. Extensive test series in the various facilities ranging from 0.05 MWe up to 39 MWe were performed in order the characterize the combustion processes with special attention to the items given above.
To study the gasification of the prepared fuel blends from industrial wastes and coal a pressurized circulating fluidized bed and an atmospheric entrained flow gasifier were available. For combustion tests of product gases the facilities were equipped with on-line analysers for the flue gas components NH3 , hydrocarbons, NOx , N2 O, SO2 , CO, CO2 and O2 . Further analyses were carried out by a FTIR-analyser.