Investigation of Urea Thermal Hydrolysis Reactor Performance to Decrease Environmental Pollution

In this work, the removal of urea from industrial wastewater by thermal hydrolysis was studied. The proposed model incorporates reaction rate of urea hydrolysis and takes into account the effects of solution non-ideality and axial dispersion of components on the reactor performance. The rate of reaction is written in terms of activity of reactants which are determined using a thermodynamic framework for system. The model provides temperature and concentration distribution of different components along the height of reactor. The predicted data of the model were consistent with the plant data indicating the validity of the model. The impact of different parameters on the performance of urea hydrolyser has been examined. The result of this work showed that an increasing inlet temperature of wastewater and steam flow rate would improve the urea removal efficiency.

Keywords:

Urea thermal hydrolysis , Urea removal , Liquid non-ideality , Activity coefficient