Investigation of leaching on the elemental composition of alternative fuels

Abstract

This study highlights the leaching process of biomass and food waste (FW), which reduces potassium and sodium content to more than 80% and improves its quality to be used as fuel. Alternative fuels with high water content, especially from FW and the palm oil industry, represent the majority of alternative resources in Malaysia. However, the combustion of these fuels often causes more ash-related problems such as fouling, slagging, and higher particle emissions compared to other fuel types. Water leaching is a pretreatment process that has a great potential to alleviate the deposition problems caused by the thermal and chemical reactions of the biomass and FW elements during its combustion and thus increase their value. This study compared the fuel characteristics and water leaching effect to the selected fuels with specific water ratios for 5 minutes. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was used to determine water leaching effectiveness to compare the relative fuel composition after leaching. Leaching results were simulated using FactSage software to predict slag formation in treated and untreated samples during combustion at 650, 800, and 950°C. Simulated results show significant slagging formation reduction following the water leaching process onto the samples. Simulating the particulate and ash compositions paves the path to formulating strategic assessment techniques to reduce their emissions and slagging tendencies.