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Proposed Coal Plant System Would Treat 200,000 Gallons of Wastewater a Day With Waste Heat
A nine-month first phase will work out the site, engineering and environmental needs for moving toward a full-scale demonstration.
Heartland Water Technology, a developer of industrial wastewater treatment systems, said Oct. 29 that the U.S. Department of Energy chose it for a project to move commercial-scale treatment of one power plant wastewater stream forward. That stream is flue gas desulfurization wastewater, which plants produce when they scrub sulfur dioxide out of their exhaust gases.
Engineering plans from the project will cover a proposed system that would treat 200,000 gallons of this wastewater a day. It would use waste heat already available at a working coal-fired power plant.
That system would cut wastewater volume substantially, the company said. For coal plants working to meet wastewater requirements under EPA’s effluent limitations guidelines, the developer said its approach offers a route toward zero liquid discharge.
Phase I is a nine-month study. It will include early design work, known as preliminary front-end engineering design, and a look at the makeup of the wastewater and the residual left after treatment. It will also review how the system would draw on waste heat and connect to the plant’s infrastructure.
Another part of the study will look at how the system could fit with carbon capture, utilization and storage configurations.
Results will help set requirements for designing and deploying the system, the company said. They will also feed into planning for a later commercial-scale demonstration and inform potential use at other coal-fired power plants in the United States, it said. The Electric Power Research Institute will be a key partner on the work.
