Biological municipal wastewater treatments lead to high sludge generation and long retention times, and the possibilities for recovery of the energy content of the input waste stream are very limited due to the low operating temperature. As an alternative, we propose a sequence of exclusively physicochemical, non-biological stages that avoid sludge production, while producing high-grade energy outflows favoring recovery, all in shorter times. Ultrafiltration and evaporation units provide a front-end concentration block, while a supercritical water oxidation reactor serves as the main treatment unit. A new approach for energy recovery from the effluent of the reactor is proposed, based on its injection in a gas turbine, which presents advantages over simpler direct utilization methods from operational and efficiency points of view. A process layout and a numerical simulation to assess this proposal have been developed. Results show that the model process, characterized with proven operating parameters, found a range of feasible solutions to the treatment problem with similar energy costs, at a fast speed, without sludge production, while co-generating the municipality’s average electricity consumption.

中文翻译：

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基于超临界水氧化反应器与燃气轮机耦合的城市污水处理厂的能量流分析

生物市政污水处理导致产生大量污泥和较长的停留时间，并且由于运行温度低，回收输入废物流的能量含量的可能性非常有限。作为替代方案，我们提出了一系列专门的物理化学、非生物阶段，以避免产生污泥，同时在更短的时间内产生有利于恢复的高品质能量流出。超滤和蒸发单元提供前端浓缩块，而超临界水氧化反应器作为主要处理单元。提出了一种从反应器流出物中回收能量的新方法，基于将其注入燃气轮机，从操作和效率的角度来看，该方法比更简单的直接利用方法具有优势。已经开发了用于评估该建议的工艺布局和数值模拟。结果表明，该模型过程以经过验证的运行参数为特征，为处理问题找到了一系列可行的解决方案，具有相似的能源成本，速度快，不产生污泥，同时共同产生城市的平均电力消耗。