Treatment of Biomass Gasification Wastewater Using a Combined Wet Air Oxidation/Activated Sludge Process

摘要

A lab-scale treatability study for using thermal and biological oxidation to treat a biomass gasification wastewater (BGW) having a chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 46,000 mg/l is described. Wet air oxidation (WA0) at 300 exp 0 C and 13.8 MPa (2000 psi) was used to initially treat the BGW and resulted in a COD reduction of 74%. This was followed by conventional activated sludge treatment using operating conditions typical of municipal sewage treatment plants. This resulted in an additional 95% COD removal. Overall COD reduction for the combined process was 99%. A detailed chemical analysis of the raw BGW and thermal and biological effluents was performed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). These results showed a 97% decrease in total extractable organics with WA0 and a 99.6% decrease for combined WA0 and activated sludge treatment. Components of the treated waters tended to be fewer in number and more highly oxidized. An experiment was conducted to determine the amount of COD reduction caused by volatilization during biological treatment. Unfortunately, this did not yield conclusive results. Treatment of BGW using WA0 followed by activated sludge appears to be very effective and investigations at a larger scale are recommended. (ERA citation 08:020018)