Interactions and Interferences of Cu, Cr and As During Contaminated Waste Wood Gasification: A Thermodynamic Equilibrium Study

Waste wood (WW) is one of the major sources of renewable energy. However, it often contaminated with metal(loid) elements at concentrations leading to toxicity emissions and damages to facilities during thermal conversion. Thence, procedures for preventing and/or reducing the negative impacts of these elements require further understanding, specifically their phase transformations during thermal conversion processes. Although it is well known that phase transformation depends on different factors such as vaporization characteristics of elements, operational conditions and process configuration, influences of atmosphere composition of the reaction are rarely investigated. Based on thermodynamic equilibrium principles, this study investigates the behaviors of most regulated elements (Cu, Cr and As) in contaminated WW in relation to the presence/absence of Ca, Na, S, Cl, Fe and Ni during gasification. Thermodynamic calculations were performed across gasification temperature range of 0-1800 degrees C, under the atmospheric pressure. Refinement of possible interactions and interferences reveals that Ni-As interactions generate dominant species As2Ni5 and As8Ni11, which increase the solid-gaseous transformation temperature of As. Furthermore, interactions between Ca and Cr predominantly forms C3Cr7; whereas absence of Ca leads to form Cr2Na2O4 which causes instability in Cr phase formation. The findings of this study indicate that the evaluation of speciation due to interactions and interferences can provide quantitative and qualitative assessments of the metal(loid) behavior in gasification.