Influence of phenol-formaldehyde and melamine-formaldehyde resins on the gasification of high-pressure laminate waste materials

Abstract

The repurposing of industrial solid wastes for sustainable energy production figures as a convenient alternative to decrease the carbon footprint of industrial processes by increasing circularity and reducing the utilization of fossil-based energy vectors. The furniture industry generates significant amounts of carbon-based waste materials, including high-pressure laminates (HPL) that comprise cellulose-based materials treated with thermosetting phenol-formaldehyde and melamine-formaldehyde resins. There are currently no energy recovery studies for this type of waste, especially concerning thermochemical conversion. In this work, we proposed to evaluate the potential of HPL wastes for the generation of energy relevant gaseous products (syngas) by gasification, using air and steam as gasifying agents in a downdraft gasifier. The influence of temperature (600–900 °C), equivalence ratio (ER, 0.20–0.30) and the presence of the thermosetting formaldehyde-based resins were evaluated in the composition (H₂ content, H₂/CO ratio) and lower heating value (LHV) of the obtained syngas. The increase in temperature positively influenced the H₂ content in the final gas product, contrarily to the increase in ER. High temperature (900 °C) and low ER (0.20) were found to favor H₂ production (43.8%vol), increase syngas fraction (58.0%vol) and LHV (7.4 MJ/Nm³) of the gas products. The presence of the thermosetting resins contributed to the production of a larger syngas fraction with high H₂ content (62.3%vol, H₂/CO = 2.4). Overall, gasification of HPL wastes was shown to be a promising alternative to the production of hydrogen-rich syngas with potential industrial applications.