Revista de Ingeniería Civil y Ambiental

The Application of Ultrafiltration for Preliminary Treatment of Liquid Waste Streams Generated in Gasification Process

Abstract

Anna Kwiecińska, Tomasz Iluk, Mateusz Kochel and Mateusz Szul

Gasification is regarded as one of the most promising technology for generation of energy using renewable and alternative fuels. Nevertheless, in order to obtain process gas of desired quality, a range of processes for removal of pollutants present in a raw gas stream needs to be performed. One of the most problematic side stream formed during gas cleaning operations is highly loaded wastewater. It is a mixture of organic and inorganic contaminants, which usually appears as a tar-aqueous condensate. It is assumed that the amount of wastewater corresponds to ca. 30-50% of the amount of fuel introduced to gasification. In the presented study membrane ultrafiltration process was proposed as the method of preliminary treatment of wastewater formed during gasification of alternative fuels. Three types of polyethersulphone membranes, which differed in cut off, were used. The goal of the process was to separate raw wastewater into a condensate enriched with organic compounds, which could be reused to the gasification process as a fuel remoistening agent, and a permeate, which had to be undergone to further treatment. The impact of undesired phenomena accompanying membrane filtration i.e., fouling and concentration polarization was determined. The process capacity and efficiency of contaminants removal was evaluated.