Microplastics in dyeing sludge: Whether do they affect sludge incineration?

Microplastics (MPs), as emerging contaminant detected in dyeing sludge (DS), inevitably affected the subsequent treatment and disposal of DS. However, the effect of MPs on the predominant disposal path (incineration) of DS remains far from explicit. This study used thermogravimetry-mass spectrometry (TG-MS) method to explore the effect of representative MPs, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), on combustion characteristics, gas evolution and kinetics on DS combustion. Results showed that PET inhibited the whole combustion of DS by physical barrier. Relatively, PVC delayed the combustion of light volatile but promoted heavy volatile and char reaction due to HCl catalyst. Generally, MPs deteriorated the combustibility, burnout performance and combustion stability of DS. MPs aggravated HCl and gaseous N emissions. Noticeably, the interactions between DS and PVC accelerated the emissions of gaseous pollutants, especially under high dose condition. DAEM and FWO models could well describe the combustion kinetic of DS containing MPs. MPs led to an increase in activation energy of DS, namely, it deteriorated the combustion efficiency of DS. The combustion mechanisms could be divided into two stages: (1) diffusion (D3) stage: melted MPs blocked the gas channels, (2) chemical reaction (F3): the residual chars were thermally stable.