Currently there are two different industrial shale oil production processes utilized in Estonia called Galoter and Kiviter. It is known that the composition of pyrolytic water from these processes is different. The most emphasized difference lies in the concentration of phenols. However, the general composition of the water has not been very deeply investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to study the pyrolytic water from solid heat carrier technology (SHC). The pyrolytic water from the SHC process was subjected to headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis for the identification of organic compounds and to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis for the identification of trace elements. The parameters generally used to describe wastewater – biochemical oxygen demand (BOD7), chemical oxygen demand (CODCr), suspended solids, dry residue, total organic carbon (TOC), pH, oil products, conductivity, amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen and sulphur –, were also measured. The analysed water contained surprisingly high amounts of sulphur and nitrogen, 0.03% and 0.24%, respectively. It was found that the water did not contain any significant amounts of toxic metals and it exhibited good biodegradability.
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