Utilization of Petrochemical Wastewater Sludge for Energy Production : Behavior, Kinetics and Modelling Through Artificial Neural Network

Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) wastewater sludge generated from the treatment of PTA wastewater can generate energy through pyrolysis and gasification. In this study, the combustion and pyrolysis behavior and kinetics of the sludge produced from the thermochemical treatment PTA wastewater were analyzed under non-isothermal heating under nitrogen and air. The reaction orders were found to be in the range of 1-3 for both pyrolysis and air oxidation/combustion. The reactions were exothermic, as indicated by the negative change in enthalpy. The phenomenon of autogasification was observed during pyrolysis for all three sludges. The analysis of the change of activation energy with the degree of conversion showed that several parallel reactions occurred at the beginning of the sludge decomposition during air combustion. The value of activation energy for FeCl3+CPAA sludge calculated by isoconversion method was 118.7 kJ/mol for pyrolysis and 127.9 kJ for combustion. These sludges are promising for energy extraction because of the high net calorific value and gross calorific value. The artificial neural network was used to validate the experimental results. The correlation coefficient between expected and experimental results. The developed ANN model successfully predicted the combustion and pyrolytic process for petrochemical sludge for the specified conditions