Removing toxicity from tower blowdown

Abstract

When tested with 13 toxic compounds that might be found in the cooling tower blowdown using effluent from the gasifier as makeup water, aromatic polyamide membrane gave the best performance in removing these toxic compounds among all the membrane tested. As a result of this study, it is concluded that the hollow-fiber reverse osmosis modules made of aromatic polyamide is a feasible system for removing these toxic compounds from cooling tower blowdown using effluent from the coal gasifier and warrants further study on a pilot scale. Scale formation in the hollow-fiber module will not pose problems because the processing waters from a coal gasifier are mostly condensates containing low concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS).