(180e) Intensification of Wastewater Treatment By Integrating Fluidized Bed Crystallization and Intensified Membrane Microfiltration

Several industrial applications, from mining, phosphate and mineral processing, to the oil industry, withdraw large amounts of fresh water, and produce equal amounts of polluted waters. The main pollutants present on these effluents can be identified as either dissolved solids, hydrocarbons, polar compounds or metals, or, as most cases, a combination of all of them. With different approaches, several processes for water treatment can be found both reported on literature or being used on treatment plants. However, the application of such different technologies often results in just the partial removal of contaminants (i.e. only reduction of dissolved solids on multistage flash and multieffect distillation; or removal of only suspended solids on hydrodocyclones) or have high associated costs for the consumed chemicals and energy. To overcome such drawbacks, a new intensified modularized water treatment process is proposed, where a Fluidized Bed Crystallization (FBC) on a Pellet Reactor (PR) process to remove hardness is coupled with a Crossflow Microfiltration (CFMF) process to remove oil and hydrocarbon components.

In the FBC, a seeding material, such as sand particles, are used to grow crystals of minerals, such as calcium, barium, magnesium, and hydrogen carbonate, contained in the treated water. In this way, the dissolved solids are retained in the solid particles of the fluidized bed, removing the hardness of the water. While on the CFMF, ceramic membranes are intensified by a chemical treatment making them organophobic, in order to remove all dissolved non-polar hydrocarbons and drops of oil