High Heating Value (HHV) Estimation of Municipal Solid Wastes Using an

Empirical Model

Honghong Shi, Rico Silbermann, Aqsha Aqsha, and Nader Mahinpey* Energy and Environment Research Group (EERG) Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering University of Calgary

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

T2N 1N4

High Heating Value (HHV) is a very important property, as it defines the energy content of different fuels. It is commonly determined either by using a bomb calorimeter or by output data from an empirical model. A wide variety of regression models exist for HHV prediction of coal, petroleum, and other traditional energy sources. However, these models may not be suitable for the HHV prediction of municipal solid waste (MSW), due to the heterogeneity of their chemical compositions and properties.
In this work, various characterizations tests of 14 different categories of MSW (from Red Deer City Landfill Facility, Canada) were conducted in order to build a general empirical model capable of predicting the HHV of landfill MSW. Both Industrial, Commercial & Institutional (ICI) wastes and Residential wastes were investigated to build the empirical model using multiple linear regression, backward stepwise regression, and best subsets regression using Minitab, a statistical analysis software.
Extraneous predictors that do not contribute statistically to HHV were eliminated. Final independent predictors of C, S and O, with an adjusted R2 equal to 0.97 were then selected. After comparing the output of the model with the HHV obtained by a bomb calorimeter, an average absolute error of 4.91% and a bias error of 0.29% were obtained, which are significantly smaller than the values obtained from available five models in the literature. Effects of moisture contents
on heating values were also investigated to study the influence of pre-drying for industrial applications. The saturated moisture adsorption point of each sample was obtained by a water vapor injection instrument at room temperature. Samples with different moisture contents were carefully prepared in order to measure the HHV using a bomb calorimeter. A good agreement between the theoretical and experimental data was observed.
Keywords: high heating value; municipal solid waste; regression
*Author for correspondence: Dr. Nader Mahinpey
Dept. of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
Schulich School of Engineering
The University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada Phone: (403) 210-6503
Fax: (403) 284-4852
E-mail: nmahinpe@ucalgary.ca
Please for all correspondence on this article, kindly contact the principal author (Dr. Nader
Mahinpey) as stated above. Thank you.