Control of the desupersaturation reactor used in the SPARRO process

The work described in this thesis focuses on the Slurry Precipitation And Recycle Reverse Osmosis (SPARRO) process. The process was designed to treat calcium sulphate (gypsum) scaling mine waters by encouraging preferentlal crystal growth onto introduced seeds, rather than on the reverse osmosis membranes. The major problem faced by the SPARRO process was the short membrane life span, possibly due to damage caused by contact with gypsum crystals. Gypsum exists in two extreme morphologies, plate and needle-like crystals, which are formed from high (0.2 M) and low (0.04 M) concentration of CaCl2 and Na2SO4 solutions respectively. This research reinvestigated the SPARRO process from a crystallisation perspective with the aims of: • Increasing the level of understanding of fundamental aspects of the SPARRO process. • Developing a technique to quantify the gypsum crystal morphology. • Developing design specifications for a 5 L lab scale desupersaturation reactor. • Developing and defining the critical parameters in controlling production of gypsum of a specified crystal size and morphology in the desupersaturation reactor.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Chemical Engineering

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Seewoo, Shilpa

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Lewis, Alison Emslie
• Van Hille, Rob

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5985

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5985