Technical, Energetic and Economic Optimization Analysis of Selection of Heat Source for Municipal Sewage Sludge Dryer

Mariusz Tańczuk and Wojciech Kostowski
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Mariusz Tańczuk: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, ul. Opole University of Technology, Mikołajczyka 5, 45-271 Opole, Poland
Wojciech Kostowski: Institute of Thermal Technology, ul. Silesian University of Technology, Konarskiego 22, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: The treatment of growing production of municipal sewage sludge has become a significant global problem. Drying of digested sewage sludge is a promising alternative to sludge disposal at dumping sites. The research objective of this study was to find the optimal heat source for a sludge drying plant in a large municipal sewage treatment plant (people equivalent: 250,000). Two boundary heat supply cases were analyzed in the paper: cogeneration of heat and power (CHP) units, internal combustion (IC) engines fired with natural gas, and plant supplied with a gas boiler. The aim of the research was to find the optimal size of the cogeneration unit cooperating with the gas boiler as heat sources for a given drying plant case with the maximum net present (NPV) value as the objective function. The results of the conducted optimization show higher profitability of cases with larger cogeneration unit. For the basic assumptions, the maximum NPV is obtained for the largest analyzed CHP unit: 1300 kW of thermal power output. Sensitivity analyses show that the varying gas and electricity prices can relocate the NPV maximum towards smaller CHP sizes. A supplementary energy analysis shows that implementing larger CHP units yields a higher energy efficiency of the system, up to 0.52.

Keywords: municipal sewage sludge drying; energetic and economic optimization; energy efficiency; CHP; heat sources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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