Municipal solid waste to liquid transportation fuels - Part I: Mathematical modeling of a municipal solid waste gasifier

This paper presents a generic gasifier model towards the production of liquid fuels using municipal solid waste (MSW) as a feedstock. The MSW gasification has been divided into three zones: pyrolysis, oxidation, and reduction. The pyrolysis zone has been mathematically modeled with an optimization based monomer model. Then, the pyrolysis, oxidation, and reduction zones are defined with different chemical reactions and equations in which some extents of these reactions are not known a priori. Using a nonlinear parameter estimation approach, the unknown gasification parameters are obtained to match the experimental gasification results in the best possible way. The results suggest that a generic MSW gasifier mathematical model can be obtained in which the average error is 8.75%. The mathematical model of the MSW gasifier is of major importance since it can be a part of a process superstructure towards the production of liquid transportation fuels.