A Multistage Well-Mixed Model for Urea Removal from Industrial Wastewater

A multistage well‐mixed model for urea removal from industrial wastewater has been proposed. The model incorporates reaction rate of urea hydrolysis and takes into account the effects of backmixing on the reactor performance. The model provides temperature and concentration distribution of different components along the height of reactor. The predicted data of the model were consistent with the plant data indicating the validity of the model. The impact of different parameters on the performance of urea hydrolyzer has been examined. The result of this work showed that an increase in inlet temperature of wastewater and steam flow rate would improve the urea removal efficiency. Limited information is available about urea removal from industrial wastewater by thermal hydrolysis. Therefore, the performance of an industrial‐scale urea thermal hydrolyser has been studied by a simple model. In this model, the hydrolyser is approximated as a multistage well‐mixed reactor to take into account the effect of backmixing on the reactor performance. The investigations mainly focus on the influence of flow rate and temperature of wastewater and steam on the urea removal efficiency.