Treating Effluent Streams at Coal Power Plants Using Membranes

摘要

There are a number of different effluent streams generated at coal fired power plants that require on-site treatment. One option for treating these effluent streams is called zero liquid discharge (ZLD), which effectively concentrates the dissolved ionic species while separating out fresh water. Currently, ZLD is an expensive option for treating these effluent streams because of the high energy and capital cost associated with the brine concentration step in the ZLD process. As such, this research is to demonstrate advanced technologies that can concentrate effluent streams to high concentrate while reducing both the energy and capital cost of the brine concentration step by 50%. A side benefit of ZLD is the generation of fresh water for local use. The main focus of this research is to demonstrate experimentally and to numerically simulate a novel membrane process for concentrating effluent streams, which can significantly reduce the energy consumed compared against commercially-available, non-membrane technologies, such as mechanical vapor recompression.