F-Cubed: TNO´s Torwash Reactor
TORWASH® consists of a reactor vessel in which wet biomass streams are hydrothermally treated through a wet torrefaction process, resulting in more easily dewaterable solids. This treatment enables efficient mechanical dewatering of the effluent slurry, removes salts from the solids, facilitates the recovery of nutrients and oils, and negates the need for the use of chemicals as dewatering aids. Once the effluent slurry has been dewatered in Limburg Filter´s filter press, the resulting solids are suitable for pelletization into intermediate bioenergy carriers. Because of the mild conditions used, the liquid fraction can be digested to generate biogas.
This technique presents significant advantages over existing dewatering methods, such as centrifugation and decantation. TORWASH® has enormous potential to offer waste solutions and value across a range of industrial sectors, such as water treatment, energy, agriculture, manufacturing and farming and the F-CUBED project is a further demonstration of this potential.
Sources
TORWASH technology successful for waste water treatment and recycling plastics | TNO
TORWASH | Waste sludge from cost item to source of revenue | TNO