Thermogravimetric and Calorimetric Characteristics of Alternative Fuel in Terms of Its Use in Low-Temperature Pyrolysis

One of the refuse derived fuel (RDF) utilization methods is low temperature pyrolysis. However, the high heterogeneity of RDF and the fact that its various components may influence on the degradation of other components causes difficulties with proper energy balance of the process. Determination of the energy balance could be performed with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Those methods allows the identification of kinetics of organic matter degradation in thermal processes, the calculation of activation energy, and energy demand/release during organic matter transformations. TGA and DSC were used to examine the potential of using RDF in low temperature pyrolysis. TGA analysis shows that main organic matter decomposition in RDF occurs at temperature range between 400 and 600 °C. This temperature range is typical for plastics decomposition, as plastics are a main component of alternative fuel derived from municipal solid waste. For the analyzed RDF samples activation energy within the 400–600 °C temperature range was at the level of 25.5 kJ mol−1. The four distinctive specific heat changes in the tested RDF material were observed, which means, four specific materials groups were decomposed. Four of this reaction were endothermal, and one was exothermal. The whole process is endothermic. The energy demand for transformations is − 63.62 J g−1. The results also shown that RDF low temperature pyrolysis product’s lower calorific value was at the level of 7.55 MJ kg−1, thus pyrolysis should not be considered as a pretreatment method for preparing CRDF for energy reuse.