Investigation on Convective Drying of Mixtures of Sewage Sludge and Sawdust in a Fixed Bed

This work is a part of a project aiming at developing a renewable fuel for gasification purposes, through convective drying of sludge/wood mixtures. The first step consists of characterizing the behavior of sawdust/sludge mixtures during the application of convective drying. The influence of the mixing step (no mixing against 30 s at 40 rpm), as well as the sawdust/sludge ratio (1/9, 2/8, 3/7 and 4/6 on a dry basis) and the effect of the drying temperature (50 °C, 80 °C and 110 °C) have been investigated. In this study, X-ray tomography, a non-invasive imaging technique, is used to assess changes in the volume, void and exchange surface at the beginning and the end of the drying process. Results first confirm the importance of the mixing step on the drying behavior: the drying rate of the mixed sludge is lower than that of the original sludge. Nevertheless the addition of sawdust is shown to have a positive impact on the drying process from a mass ratio of 2/8, with drying rates higher than that of the original sludge. With increasing amount of sawdust, the initial and final bed volumes, initial and final total exchange surfaces, and initial void fraction increase linearly, but the bed volume shrinkage and final void fraction decrease linearly.