Thermal Characterization of Various Reduced Derived Fuel Materials for Energy Applications

The quest to research the new engineering materials for energy applications is increasing day by day due to decrease in fossil fuel materials. Moreover, the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) by converting it to the energy is need of our society to address the energy shortage as well as environmental issues. Refused derived fuel (RDF) material is one of the energy products of MSW, whose reliability and quality with respect to the energy is analyzed in this work. Three different RDF materials (RDF-A, RDF-B and RDF-C) have been characterized by thermal analysis techniques to suggest best RDF based on energy efficiency. The results showed that the RDF-A contains higher amounts of carbon (52.44%) and hydrogen (4.184%) contents and good calorific value (5278 kcal/kg), which leads to a better fuel quality. TGA analysis revealed that with the increase in volatile matter fraction of RDF materials, the retention time under combustion atmosphere has also been increased accordingly. In the light of all results RDF-A was suggested to be a good candidate for energy applications and can be used as fuel for various combustion reactions.