Alternate: Is Biosolids Gasification and Pyrolysis Living up to the Hype?

This presentation will explore the status of gasification and pyrolysis system projects that are either in development or recently commissioned. With ever increasing restrictions on landfill and land application and a growing concern with emerging contaminants, specifically perfluorinated compounds (ie. PFAS), there is increasing interest in these types of thermal technologies. The state of the research on these technologies to deal with emerging contaminants will also be presented. The presentation will provide a brief background on biosolids process technologies, highlight current biosolids trends including the barriers impacting technology and resource recovery, and provide an update on gasification and pyrolysis technologies that are currently being implemented in the marketplace. The presentation will present a biosolids road map and risk triggers that utilities can use in planning (Figure 1). There are several biosolids gasification and pyrolysis systems and demonstrations that are being planned globally including several in North America (such as Bioforcetech, Ecoremedy, Earthcare, Harvest Technologies, Pyrocal, Aquagreen and Heartland Technologies). The presentation will present an update on the status of these projects in North America as well as a status of projects internationally including in Germany, Australia and Asia. As part of the presentation, the results of a technology screening evaluation conducted for a large regional gasification and pyrolysis facility in Australia will be discussed. As most gasification and pyrolysis processes require upstream drying (Figure 2), the evaluation considered various upstream processing alternatives including anaerobic digestion, solar drying and thermal drying. The screening evaluation only considered technologies that have full scale operating installations and technologies that produce a biochar for beneficial use. These gasification and pyrolysis technologies for sludge and biosolids have not had great success historically and many past attempts to commercialize these processes have not been successful. Lessons learned from early adopters and considerations for future planning will also be discussed. The presentation will provide an update on technologies that are being implemented in the marketplace.