Continuous salt precipitation and separation from supercritical water. Part 2. Type 2 salts and mixtures of two salts

Using a continuously operated laboratory plant for the catalytic hydrothermal gasification of biomass featuring a supercritical water salt separator we investigated the separation performance of three different binary type 2 salt-water mixtures and three ternary salt-water mixtures that consisted either of two type 1 salts or two type 2 salts dissolved in water. It turned out that a concentrated salt brine could not be recovered at the salt separator for the binary type 2 salt-water mixtures of Na₂CO₃, Na₂SO₄, and K₂SO₄. These salts precipitate as solids from supercritical water and thus lead to salt deposits inside the salt separator vessel.The ternary mixtures of two type 1 salts dissolved in water (KH₂PO₄-K₂HPO₄-H₂O and three different mixtures of NaNO₃-K₂CO₃-water) exhibited a separation performance similar to the binary solutions of type 1 salts that were discussed in Part 1 of this article. However, the mixtures showed separation performances that were different from the corresponding single salt solutions.It was also possible to recover a concentrated brine when feeding solutions containing the two type 2 salts Na₂CO₃ and K₂SO₄. For these mixtures a certain amount of the type 1 salt K₂CO₃ might form in supercritical water leading to salt separation efficiencies up to 95% for these mixtures.