A Portable Fluidized-Bed Reactor for Flash Pyrolysis of Landfill Waste

The Main Base Landfill at Edwards Air Force Base will reach full capacity by no later than 2017, and many other landfills across the country are facing the same situation. Waste streams need to be redirected to extend the lives of these facilities. We propose to develop a portable, flash-pyrolysis, fluidized-bed reactor system purpose-built for conversion of landfill waste to bio-oil fuel. While wood pyrolysis has advanced to the commercial stage, existing pyrolysis plants are large and unoptimized for processing landfill waste, which is highly variable in composition. The proposed pyrolysis reactor will have a unique reactor design that allows better control over the process variables critical for processing a highly inhomogeneous feedstock. In Phase I, thermogravimetric analyses will be performed to identify the pyrolysis kinetics for the primary constituents of the landfill waste. This kinetic data will be used to design a reactor that can operate on a broad range of those feedstocks. A bench-scale prototype will be constructed and used to demonstrate feasibility. In Phase II, the prototype will be packaged into a tightly integrated system with waste heat capture and power generation for the process units.