Application of Confined Plunging Liquid Jet Reactor (CPLJR) as an aeration and brine dispenser technique for the environmental safe discharge of brine from Kuwaits desalination plants

<p>Bader Shafaqa Al-Anzi</p>

Application of Confined Plunging Liquid Jet Reactor (CPLJR) as an aeration and brine dispenser technique for the environmental safe discharge of brine from Kuwaits desalination plants

Bader Shafaqa Al-Anzi

Kuwait University, Kuwait

: J Nucl Ene Sci Power Generat Technol

Abstract

More than 90% of Kuwait’s freshwater needs are met by desalination with a cumulative production of 2.1 million cubic meters per day. The desalination plants located along the northern and southern coasts discharge brine directly into the highly biodiverse coastal waters. A continuous long-term discharge may change the chemical and physical characteristics of the receiving water body. Incorporation of the novel CPLJR for the discharge is an ideal way to mitigate these environmental impacts by enhancing the dissolved oxygen dissolution, mixing and dilution rate. The CPLJR reactor possesses many advantages over conventional methods, such as: 1. Brings two phases in contact and achieves high mass transfer rate by entraining gas bubbles into liquid; 2. Improves gas absorption rates by increasing the contact time between the gas bubbles and the water aided by increasing the jet penetration depth and creating a fine dispersion of bubbles; 3. Increases the gas-liquid contact surface through reducing primary bubble coalescence into secondary ones; 4. Efficient mixing; 5. Relatively low power inputs; 6. Low operating costs. Gas-liquid reactors are employed in a variety of processes, such as reaction in the chemical industry, wastewater treatment, air pollution abatement and fermentation. It consists of a vertical tube that is partially immersed in the liquid pool. The top end of the tube is connected to a nozzle, whilst the other end (bottom) is left open to the receiving liquid pool, known as confining tube (down comer). CPLJR improves the gas mass transfer rate into liquid by increasing the jet penetration depth and contact time between the gas and liquid and increasing the gas – liquid contact through hindering or reducing primary bubbles coalescence into secondary ones. The current work deals with the investigation of air entrainment performance of the novel CPLJR with different geometrics and also deals to determine the effects of the jet velocity, jet length, nozzle diameter, and down comer diameter on the volumetric rate of gas entrainment. The entrainment rate increased with an increase in jet velocity, jet length, down comer depth, nozzle diameter. The entrainment rate increased by about 40-50% with a two fold increase in jet length.