Process simulation and techno-economic analysis of olive oil mill wastewater steam reforming

Olive oil production contributes to environmental deterioration, mainly due to the land spreading of the pollutant effluents. One solution to treat these liquid effluents (olive mill wastewater -OMWW) is the steam reforming (OMWWSR) reaction.In this work, the effects of the main parameters that affect the OMWWSR process were studied: composition of the effluent, total pressure, and temperature of the reformer; furthermore, several reactor configurations were simulated: traditional reactor (TR), autothermal reactor (ATR), sorption-enhanced reactor (SER), and sorption -enhanced autothermal reactor (SEATR). All reactor configurations treated an effluent flow rate of approxi-mately 12 tons/h, which equals the quantity of OMWW produced by a big Portuguese olive oil producer com-pany. In addition, energy integration and techno-economic analyses were elaborated to reveal which reactor configuration(s) presented the most attractive results. It was verified that the ATR and SER presented higher performances in terms of H2 production per kmol of OMWW fed and energy consumption per kmol of H2 pro-duced. Finally, it was observed that the ATR achieved a net present value (NPV) that ranged from 7.2 to 9.2 Meuro and payback times (PB) which ranged from 3 to 2 years. Regarding the SER configuration, the NPV and PB ranged from 4.7 to 12.2 Meuro and 5-2 years, respectively.