Dr. Ming Zhao

School of Environment, Tsinghua University

Title

Gasification of Municipal Solid Waste for Value-added Energy Byproducts

Abstract

In China, annual production of municipal solid wastes (MSWs) has reached 1 billion tons, including household wastes, sewage sludge, food wastes and industrial bio-wastes. In the context that landfilling and composting are shrinking in Chinese MSWs market, large-scale incineration has been more and more prevalent. Even China is nowadays implementing super strict emission control policies, MSW incinerators of 500+ tons/day scale is still economically applicable, in particular for the south and east parts of China. However, the MSWs in rural areas (normally <200 tons/day) are becoming a serious issue in recent years because centralized incineration is not doable there. Gasification is an alternative of incineration in these areas because of cleaner process and lower capital investment; more importantly, value-added energy byproducts can be achieved other than just electricity. This talk briefly introduces how gasification is applied in China, and emphasizing one key technology, i.e. catalytic tar degradation with multi-functional materials.