Experimental Investigation of Refinery Waste Cake for its Potential use as Biofuel Source

Abstract

Biofuel is a type of oil which is formed through anaerobic digestion process. It is frequently used as a transformation of biomasses into useful energy product. Thermal degradation is an effective technique for the characterization of waste cake for biofuel production. This research work was focused on the characterization of waste cake collected from oil refinery. The sample was analyzed for its calorific value, proximate value and elemental analysis. The results reflected that HHV of dry waste cake was higher (22.5MJ/kg) than wet waste cake (20.5MJkg) and commonly used sugar can bagasse (17.88MJ/kg). The percentage composition of carbon (49.8 percent, 40.8), hydrogen (7.9 percent, 6.0 percent), nitrogen (2.8 percent, 1.9 percent), sulphur (1.9 percent, 0.5 percent), and oxygen content (37.6 percent, 40.4 percent) were shown in the elemental analysis of dry waste cake versus moist cake. When it comes to the thermal degradation behaviour of dry and wet cake in TGA, wet cake has greater moisture contents (68.50 percent) than dry cake (40.1 percent). Wet cake has a low volatile matter (30.9%) and a high volatile matter (30.9%). (14.3 percent). Similarly, the percentage of ash in dry cake (17.3 percent) increases while it decreases in moist cake (5.11 percent). In contrast to the foregoing, the percent fraction of carbon in wet cake increased (12.09%) whereas it decreased in dry cake (11.7 percent).