Recovery of heat and chemical values from spent pulping liquors

An integrated process for the recovery of energy and chemical values from spent pulping liquors comprising an initial stage of subjecting concentrated spent pulping liquor to combustion with air in a fluidized bed reaction chamber provided with a plurality of inert solid particulate materials, at least one of which is of finer particle size than another, followed by at least one further step of treating the finer particle size inert particulate material in an external fluidized bed to recover heat values wherein at least a portion of said inert finer particle size solid particulate material is separated from the gaseous and solid combustion products produced by said combustion with air and passed to said external fluidized bed and then passed back to said fluidized bed reaction chamber;

• wherein said solid combustion products and said gaseous combustion products obtained from said separation are then also separated and the separated solid combustion products are passed to a molten salt reducer for recovery of smelt leaving a minor portion of said solid combustion products entrained in said gaseous combustion products;
• and thereafter said separated gaseous combustion products containing said remaining entrained solid combustion products are further oxidized at a temperature greater than the melting point of said solid combustion products and molten salts are recovered from said further oxidation and fed back to the reducer.