Optimal design of a rotating packed bed for VOC stripping from contaminated groundwater

Abstract

Groundwater pollution by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a serious environmental concern, and several techniques have been suggested and employed to strip off these harmful compounds. Since groundwater is classified as a distributed scale system, an efficient VOC stripping system should be portable and economically competitive. The focus of the current study is to remove trichloroethylene (TCE) from contaminated groundwater in a rotating packed bed (high gravity or HiGee). Although industrial applications of HiGee do exist, studies on optimal design of the same is scarce in the literature. The present study optimizes the design of an industrial-scale HiGee stripping process with conflicting objectives such as total annual cost (TAC) and total VOC removal under consideration. The synergy effect of heating and rotation is studied, and several inferences from this study are listed. Pareto-optimal solutions obtained provide a wide range of optimized design alternatives, one of which can be chosen and employed by the designers, as per their end needs. Component-wise power consumption, uncertainty analysis, and sensitivity analysis of the involved parameters and variables are also studied to provide further insights into the process. © 2011 American Chemical Society.