Combustion of sludge in Fortum’s plants with possible phosphorus recycling

Sammanfattning: The management of waste is by all means a great challenge to any society. In Sweden, the past decades has seen legislation progressing in congruence with concerns over environmental stress from inefficient waste management. The legislative changes aim primarily to promote waste reduction and better waste utilization. Sludge is a waste-type from different industrial processes and is unfortunately of limited reuse and recycling-value, but sludge combustion for energy recovery appears promising. Also, the oftentimes high phosphorus content in sludge strengthens the potential of extracting phosphorus from combustion ashes. The heat and power industry has shown great interest in sludge combustion. Fortum has a set of different sludge types to choose from as well as many different options available based on where and how the sludge can be incinerated. Yet there are many inherent problems, but also operational benefits, of combusting sludge. These factors combined make the venture multifaceted and therefore not straightforward. Based on this, this thesis is a preliminary study aiming to assess the possibility of combusting sludge in Fortum’s existing or future facilities, along with possible phosphorus recovery from the combustion ashes. The study was based on applying either sludge mono- or co-combustion. The scenarios evaluated were; firing 70000 tonnes of digested sewage sludge, 50000 tonnes of fibrous sludge and 26400 tonnes of digestate which all are pertinent sludge amounts in this study. Co-combustion involved firing these together with the base fuels fired in Fortum’s grate furnace and fluidized bed boilers in Brista and Högdalen CHP plants. The mixing yielded new characteristics of the combustion input, such as a lower heating value, which were vetted against the boilers’ capability to handle these. Mono-combustion was compared economically with co-combustion to assess investment profitability. The phosphorus concentration in the ashes from the mixes was determined as well in order to assess the possibility for viable extraction. In addition, proper sludge pretreatment methods were examined. The results showed that co-incineration of 70000 tonnes digested sewage sludge was possible in boiler P6 in Högdalen and B2 in Brista. These generated an economic gain with an internal rate of return of 96,3 % and 96,4 % respectively. It was possible to co-incinerate 50000 tonnes of fibrous sludge in boilers B1 and B2 in Brista as well as P6 although economic gains were only seen in B1, where the internal rate was 87,5 %. Co‑incinerating 26400 tonnes of digestate was possible in all boilers except P3 assuming that the similar boilers P1 and P2 in Högdalen can incinerate the sludge in tandem. The incineration of digestate yielded an economic gain for these boilers with an internal rate ranging from 25,7 % for P1 and P2 in tandem to 102,6 % for B1. Although mono-combustion is a practical solution it was found not to be an economically feasible alternative under prevailing economic conditions. The results also indicated that NOx and SOx formation increased in the raw flue gaseswhen co‑firing sludge, as also was the case with flue gas volume flow and flue gas water vapor. Fossil CO2 emissionsdecreased for all waste fired boilers when co-combusting sludge. Digested sewage sludge and digestate increased combustion ash amounts in all cases, whereas fibrous sludge only did this in B1. All sludge types were found to be beneficial for reducing the risk of corrosion and agglomeration, but digested sewage sludge was remarkably more so than digestate and fibrous sludge. The phosphorus concentration in the co-combustion ashes was deemed insufficient for viable phosphorus extraction, but was promising when firing digested sewage sludge in B1. The concentration was sufficient in a mono-combustion application when firing digested sewage sludge and digestate. Overall environmental impacts are however dubious. There needs to be further investigation in order to properly assess these.