Nevada, United States
Wastewater Treatment Plant Using Vapor Compression is Operational
A vapor compression plant treating refinery wastewater with toxic organics, sulfides, phenols and glycol, recovering more than 75% as distilled water.
Sequoia is pleased to announce the successful start of a new wastewater processing plant which uses the vapor compression technique. Vapor compression is an energy-efficient way of evaporating water.
At a plant in the western USA, more than 20,000 gallons (75,000 litres) of wastewater is processed every day, yielding more than 75% distilled water, thereby concentrating the wastewater to less than a quarter of its volume. The wastewater comes from a refinery and contains toxic organics, sulfides, phenols, ethylene glycol and metallic compounds. A distillation step is built into the vapor compression technique to further purify the distilled water vapors of undesirable organic contaminants.
Towards zero liquid discharge
By successfully demonstrating the use of vapor compression distillation, we believe that hard-to-treat wastewaters from the refining, chemical and power industries can be concentrated efficiently. The concentrate from the vapor compression distiller can be further processed with a forced-circulation reboiler or an evaporation pond to achieve zero liquid discharge.
