CONVERSION OF CARBON-CONTAINING RAW MATERIAL USING PLASMA TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract

The state of development of plasma gasification technologies of carbon-containing raw materials in Ukraine is analyzed. It is shown that despite some pessimistic domestic assessments of the prospects for their development, the state of research and development in this field at the global level indicates the inevitable breakthrough directions for the development of such technologies and, first of all, in the field of hydrogen energy. In particular, this concerns the prospects of using such difficult-to-process raw materials for hydrogen production as, for example, sewage sludge or worn automobile tires. This will create an additional powerful effect from their implementation, bearing in mind the solution of complex environmental problems of modern Ukraine. The experimental part of this work is devoted to the study of the prospects of such processing, using the example of a laboratory version of a plasma chemical reactor, made according to the scheme of the process of inverted gasification of solid organic raw materials with the introduction of a plasma jet into the pyrolysis zone. The output of hydrogen depended on the raw material: the lowest one was from sewage sludge pellets, and the highest one was from rubber crumb of worn automobile tires; in the case of gasification of a mixture of sewage sludge pellets and rubber crumb, an intermediate value of this indicator was observed. It is important that the output of hydrogen was determined not so much by its content in the raw material, but by the reactivity of the latter, which also corresponded to the degree of use of water vapor. The level of reactivity determined the degree of use of water vapor in the case of pellets up to 29 %, and rubber crumb up to 56 % and, accordingly, the chemical efficiency of gasification reached 39 % and 55 %. It follows from the results of the research that in the conditions of relatively low temperatures in the experimental reactor, the mixing of pellets of sewage sludge and rubber crumb does not create a synergistic effect of advantages regarding the energy efficiency of the process. Bibl. 58, Fig. 4, Tab. 4.