Effect of temperature and residence time on torrefaction of municipal sewage sludge

Malaysia, a developing country with a constant rise in population, recorded an increase in municipal and industrial wastes with approximately 23,000 tonnes of wastes were produced each day in Malaysia (Behzad et al., 2011a). This resulted in an increase of total waste generated. With the common practice of waste disposal through landfill, and incineration, these contributes to another environmental issue; the pollution. To achieve a sustainable environment, new alternatives was found by researchers to treat wastes. Torrefaction is one of thermal process that is applied on biomass, to convert it into three useful products, char, bio-oil and condensable gases. In current research, char from lignocellulosic biomass was proven as the good alternative in the fuel industry. However, the characteristics of non-lignocellulosic biomass makes it possible for researchers to conduct a studies on it. Hence, the objective of this study is to produce char from municipal sewage sludge by using torrefaction method. In this study, municipal sewage sludge obtained from Indah Water Konsortium, located in Johor, Malaysia, has been used as the raw material.