Development of a Continuous Hydrothermal Reaction Apparatus

Abstract

House wastes containing human waste increase rapidly in recent years. The aim of the present study is to obtain fundamental knowledge for hydrothermal decomposition of these wastes on an industrial scale. For mass treatment of wastes, it is impossible to rely on the conventional batch method with autoclaves, hence we produced a simple continuous pipeline system, which was composed of injection pump, exchanger, preheater, and reactor, for hydrothermal decomposition. Characteristics tests of this pipeline system were performed.
The test results showed that, though the temperature gradient in the reactor became large with the inflow of water, the rate of the elevation of temperature in the reactor remained uniform.
The treatment ability of the pipeline system was discussed with decomposition ratio of lepidolite. When lepidolite was decomposed by the pipeline system, decomposition ratio was reached about 90% at 360°C in the reactor. High decomposition ratio was obtained as the case of using an autoclave under same hydrothermal conition.