Phd in CHEMICAL PROCESSES FOR INDUSTRY AND ENVIRONMENT

Thesis title: Processi di Conversione Chimica dei Rifiuti in ottica di Energy Transition e Carbon Footprint reduction

The following Ph.D. Thesis has the aim of study the newest technologies to convert the Refused Derived Fuel (RDF), i.e. the sorted and pre-treated municipal solid waste and plasmix (non-recyclable part of plastic waste), into new components, following the principles of energy transition. The work in its entirety is divided into four main chapters; the first chapter, as usual, is the introduction to the main theme analysed during the three years of Ph.D., which is the waste treatment as basis to produce clean energy or green chemical products, in place of using conventional fossil fuel. The introduction shows the state of art of the technologies that today are used for the waste management (focusing on incineration and gasification), pointing out the “as is” situation. Moving on, the following chapter consists of a comparison between the two technologies that are the main characters of the thesis, which are the waste to energy and waste to chemical ones. These two different technologies deal with the waste management following two different ways: in the first case, the core of the technology is the incineration process, which uses the waste as a fuel to generate heat and then power energy through a steam cycle. The step further of this work was to study this technology as a unit of a bigger plant, considering CO2 capture unit and conversion reactors. On the other hand, waste to chemical technology considers the waste not as a fuel for a combustion reaction, but as a feed for a gasification reactor; thanks to this completely new approach, a waste to chemical plant can recover all the carbon contained inside the waste transforming it into syngas, which can be seen building block for a bunch of different reactions. The third chapter of the thesis collects all the works made by the author which has been published in different scientific papers during the three years of Ph.D. In every work reported in the chapter, a different technology belonging to the Waste to energy – Waste to Chemical approach is described, furnished with both economic and environmental analysis, so as to the authors were able to evaluate not only the carbon footprint reduction achievable, but also the economic feasibility of the proposed plant. Finally, in the conclusion the author sums up the work done and all the results these research have brought, making visible how this new technologies can be very useful in the early future to build a grounded energy transition strategy for chemical industrial sector.