Studies on the technique of flue gas desulfurization with seawater focused on a simultaneous generation of electricity and drinking water

Project Number 353

The innovation of the R & D project focuses on the use of brine, which is generated during the production of drinking water, in the flue gas desulfurization process of fossil fired power plants. The coupling of the system on both, the material and the energy side leads to a significant reduction of the necessary amount of water (in addition to the already known beneficial effect obtainable by the use of waste heat from the power plant). Thereby resources can be saved and the possibility of effective secondary treatment can be established. In addition, the catalytic effect of trace elements (iron, manganese, etc.) regarding the oxidation can be improved significantly. The salt content is reduced through the back mixing of brine before the discharge, to minimize negative impacts on flora and fauna.

The research project will be carried out by three research centres. Research centre 3 (University of Duisburg-Essen, Faculty of Engineering, Institute of Thermal Process Engineering) provides the thermodynamic bases for sea water. These are developed in terms of activity coefficients as a function of electrolyte concentration ranges that allows a real-time capable integration in CFD model. Research centre 2 (Institute for Energy and Environmental Technology) builds and operates a pilot plant consisting of a seawater desalination plant, a scrubber and an oxidation basin, in which various synthetic brines are examined. For the brine production, a vacuum distillation, a multi-effect distillation (MED) and multiple reverse osmosis plants can be used. Due to the different operating conditions of the desalination technologies, brines with different qualities are produced. Based on the recorded measurement data, the kinetic parameters will be involved in a CFD model (Research centre 1, University of Dortmund, Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering, Fluid Mechanics). The result of CFD simulation is an intermediate result, which shows the pilot plant with different composite electrolyte solutions. Based on this intermediate result, fumigation influenced by fluid dynamics can be calculated for the oxidation basins with realistic sizes quantities and operational approaches. With the intended research projects, the technical principles are developed to describe the oxygen uptake and the reaction kinetics during and after the absorption in a realistic way.

The project is supervised by the Working Panel Flue Gas Cleaning Technology. The research project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology via the AiF (AiF project no. 17118 N). The duration of the project is two years.