Co-gasification of blast furnace dust with petcoke for sustainable waste management

[Display omitted] •A novel method to utilize blast furnace dust (BFD) in conjunction with petcoke.•Enhanced hydrogen yield and carbon conversion effects with co-gasification.•Formation of valuable solid by-products of franklinite, zincite, hematite, etc.•Detailed characterization studies applying XRF, TGA, XRD, FTIR, SEM, and FESEM-EDX. This study employed a lab-scale fluidized bed steam gasification setup to perform the co-gasification experiments with blast furnace dust (BFD) and petcoke (PC) − wastes from the steel and refining industries, respectively. Multiple experiments were conducted at the optimized conditions to decipher the effects of the mineralogical content of the feed samples on the gasification performance parameters. With the addition of iron and zinc-abundant BFD sample to PC, an effective enhancement in the ability of the gasifier to produce hydrogen-rich synthesis gas was observed, attributed to an increase in surface active sites for gasification reactivity. An increase of almost 3% and 12 % in cold gas and carbon conversion efficiencies, respectively, was attributed to the catalytic effect of iron and zinc-containing phases in the product ash, resulting in a positive surge in the heating values and the product gas yields. To decipher the catalytic effect, the feed and product samples were characterized by employing analytical techniques of XRF, XRD, TGA, FTIR, SEM techniques with EDX analysis. The co-gasification product ash sample showed the formation of different zinc and iron dominating minerals, such as franklinite (ZnFe2O4), zincite (ZnO), hematite (Fe2O3), and magnetite (Fe3O4), to cater the needs of the growing world mineral demands, as a secondary mineral resource. This work exhibited a novel method to utilize industry wastes with the simultaneous removal of toxic substrates. Overall, potential energy recovery from industrial by-products was highlighted, providing insights towards developing a sustainable waste management technology with scalable prospects of a circular industrial economy.