Sustainable flue-gas quench : For waste incineration plants within a water-energy-environment nexus perspective

The function of a flue-gas quench is to remove additional contaminants from flue-gas and to reduce the wastewater from a waste incineration plant. The aim of this degree project is to find how the system is affected by using a quench and what factors limits the performance. This is done by modelling and simulating a waste incineration plant in Aspen Plus. Data and plant schematics were obtained by a study visit to Mälarenergi Plant 6 situated in Västerås, Sweden, which were used as model input and for model validation. The results have shown that the amount of wastewater can be reduced by more than half compared to a plant without a quench. The heat produced in the condenser, when discharging water to the boiler, would be lowered by up to 20%. For systems with a quench present when more water was discharged to the boiler both the heat production and the pollutant capturing became better. However, the system has limits regarding the amount that could be recirculated, in the form of temperature limits in different parts of the system. In addition, if the heat load is low there is an insufficient amount of wastewater generated in the condenser to run the quench. In that situation, clean (fresh) water needs to be used instead. Using clean water is unwanted since the plant will then consume more resources while still producing less heat than a plant without a quench would