Air Pollution Control Innovations

Ozone Injection for NOx Control on Medical Waste Incinerators

Posted by Andy Bartocci on Tue, Oct 30, 2018 @ 09:39 AM

Early this year I posted about achieving ultra-low emission limits for medical waste incinerator scrubbers.Med waste incinerator scrubber Front  An example was given for a captive incinerator at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, TX. It’s one of the only systems in the United States permitted as a “new” medical waste incinerator according to the EPA HMIWI (hospital, medical, and infectious waste incinerator) MACT standard. This standard has the most challenging emission limits found in industry today. That is because in 2009 the EPA completed a source review and revised the standard based on a MACT-on-MACT analysis.  Data used to set limits for each pollutant was individually based on waste feed and not incinerator/scrubber technology performance.  This resulted in emission limit reductions for lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and dioxins/furans (D/F) that were orders of magnitude below the previous standard and below the capability of installed equipment.  The impact of the new standard is discussed in greater detail in a 2013 blog post and corresponding paper from the Air & Waste Management Association (AWMA) International Conference on Thermal Treatment Technologies and Hazardous Waste Combustors (IT3/HWC)..
Medical waste incinerator Scrubber add-on controlsExisting incinerators needed to be upgraded with add-on controls to meet the new standard.  New incinerators need air pollution control equipment capable of extraordinarily high removal efficiency for particulate, Pb, Cd, and D/F.  A new medium sized incinerator between 200 to 500 lb/hr capacity, has the additional challenge of meeting NOx.  A medical waste incinerator can be tuned to a NOx limit of about 130 ppmv.  The MACT standard limit for a new medium sized medical waste incinerator was set at 67 ppmv which means NOx abatement is required to guarantee compliance.

Envitech is building two scrubber systems to treat exhaust gases from two new medical waste incinerators that will treat captive waste at a research facility.  The incinerators are permitted as new medium size incinerators which must meet the 67 ppmv NOx limit. The scrubbers have an equipment arrangement for meeting emission standards for PM, HCl, SO2, Pb, Cd, Hg, D/F, and opacity.  The schematic below shows the components of the gas cleaning system. The quencher is used to cool the gas to saturation and remove large particulate. The packed bed condenser/absorber sub-cools the gas and removes acid gases with caustic injection. The Venturi scrubber removes particulate and the majority of heavy metals. The gas then passes through additional polishing controls to meet the ultra-low emission limits for Pd, Cd, Hg, and D/F. The polishing equipment includes a re-heat duct followed by a filter and carbon bed adsorber.Med waste scrubber PFD

NOx removal is achieved by injecting ozone injection into the quencher outlet. The sizIMG_1032 Backside 1e of the condenser/absorber is increased to provide sufficient residence time for ozone-NOx reactions to occur.  Ozone is highly selective for NOx relative to other combustion products.   The NOx is rapidly converted to water soluble species. NO and O3 react to form NO2 and O2.  NO2 and O2 react to form N2O5 and O2. N2O5 and water react to form 2HNO3 which is readily absorbed with caustic solution.

Envitech used it’s rectangular scrubber design for the condenser absorber. To maintain a modular design and make it shippable.  The vessel was flanged connected and shipped in two pieces. The scrubber system otherwise looks like a typical medical waste incinerator scrubber except the condenser/absorber is double the height compared to systems that do not require NOx control.

The system has been built and shipped to the site. The major components are installed at the facility.  Envitech will deliver a water treatment system in 2019 to treat the scrubber effluent before it is discharged to the facilities main water treatment system.  System Start-up is scheduled for 2020.

Click on the link below to download a case study and other medical waste incinerator scrubbing literature.

 Download Literature

Topics: Scrubbers, Acid Gas, MACT Standards, Medical Waste Incinerator Scrubber, Incinerator Scrubber, NOx

Envitech Lab Scrubbers for Gaseous Emissions and/or Particulate Control

Posted by Andy Bartocci on Tue, May 22, 2018 @ 11:31 AM

Packed bed absorbers are often used to treat gaseous emissions for reasonably large gas flow rates ranging from a few thousand cfm to greater than 70,000 cfm. Common emissions include SOx, HCl, HF, and NOx. The absorbers are often custom engineered for a specific plants and have been used for secondary lead smelters, geothermal power plants, waste oil-re-refiners, ceramic tile manufacturing, waste incinerators, and ethanol plants. The types of emission sources range from thermal oxidizers, regenerative thermal oxidizers (RTO’s), furnaces, kilns, direct fired heaters, incinerators, fermenters, vent tanks, and batch mixers.

Lab Scrub Mktg 1-1Envitech developed a lab scrubber to provide an economic solution for smaller gas flow rate applications.  The lab scrubber is a packaged unit designed for high efficiency of water soluble contaminants and can handle up to 2,000 cfm of gas at a maximum temperature of 180°F. The system is engineered for reduced footprint at 4 ft x 4 ft and includes a pre-wired control panel and pre-piped service utility connections requiring minimal installation and maintenance costs. Scrubber units are configurable to different levels of automation and treatment applications.  

A recent lab scrubber is for a manufacturer of pharmaceutical products in Southern, California. The scrubber is designed to remove HCl from the exhaust of several small laboratory process vent streams. The vent streams includes low organic concentrations which are incompatible with many common plastic materials. Special resin was selected for the fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) vessel and ductwork.  Piping and valves were assembled using PVDF.  The scrubber is designed for a classified area with explosion proof motors and instruments and is provided as a turn-key installation.

 

 

Lab Scrub Mktg 3Another example  is a process vent scrubber for a blending facility in South Carolina that produces crop protection products for agricultural markets.  The vent stream is 1,500 cfm and includes HCl and water soluble particulate greater than 3 micron in size. The Envitech lab scrubber was configured to include a low pressure drop Venturi for particulate control combined with a packed bed absorber for HCl control.  The system includes instruments, control system, recirculation pump, pre-assembled piping, valves, and fittings, interconnect duct, ID fan, and stack. 

Vent ScrubberA different use for a lab scrubber includes an ethylenediamine (EDA) scrubber installed in the South Eastern United States.  The storage of this precursor chemical requires extra handling than is typical with other common industrial chemicals.  With a relatively low exposure limit of 10 ppm, storage tanks must be properly engineered and scrubbed to remove excess vapors.  The Envitech lab scrubber is an ideal, low cost solution for this type of storage system.

Please click on the link below to download a brochure and case studies for the lab scrubber.

 Download Literature

Topics: particulate control, Scrubbers, SO2 Scrubber, Acid Gas, NOx, Vent

Mobile NOx Packed Bed Scrubber for Sulfuric Acid Manufacturers

Posted by Andy Olds on Thu, May 17, 2018 @ 10:00 AM

Sulfuric acid plants manufacture acid by burning sulfur with air in a smelter to form sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxidizing sulfur dioxide catalytically into sulfur trioxide (SO3), and absorbing sulfur trioxide into water to form sulfuric acid.  An unwanted coproduct of sulfur combustion is nitrogen oxide (NO).  In the catalyst beds, nitrogen oxide partially converts to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and the two react with sulfuric acid to form nitrosylsulfuric acid (NOHSO4).  Candle filters located downstream of the catalyst beds collect most of the nitrosylsulfuric acid.Vertex_Rectangular_Scrubber

Candle filters require periodic maintenance. To maintain the equipment, operators wash the candle filters with water to remove the sulfuric acid contained within them before entering the candle filters for maintenance activities. Unfortunately, water reacts with built-up nitrosylsulfuric acid to reform NOx. Since there is no diluting gases, NOx concentrations leaving the candle filter during the wash may be very high, both dangerous to operators and potentially forming an opaque brown cloud.

Recently, Envitech developed an economical solution to this problem by designing a mobile NOx scrubber. A mobile NOx scrubber, rather than a fixed system, has several advantages in this application. First, a mobile system does not consume valuable footprint during normal operation. The area around the candle filters is often congested. A fixed system requires "shoe-horning" the equipment in a hazardous location, adding cost. A mobile solution provides flexibility to position the scrubber in optimal locations near the candle filter without permanently consuming valuable space. Temporary utility connections suffice for a mobile solution, further reducing installation costs. Second, a mobile scrubber can service multiple candle filters or other process vessels, even at different facilities. Finally, Envitech's mobile scrubber is multi-functional, designed to abate a number of hazardous chemicals in addition to nitrosylsulfuric acid, such as hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and other soluble gaseous emissions.

Envitech's mobile NOx scrubber offers the ability to abate over 99% of the NOx emissions during maintenance activities for flow rates of up to 1,000 acfm for a single reagent system and 15,000 acfm for a multi-reagent NOx reduction system. Envitech's mobile NOx scrubbers are fully automated, stand-alone scrubbers requiring only utility and gas connections, and configurable to handle a variety of pollutants. If you are interested in more information about Envitech's mobile scrubber, click on the link below to download a cut sheet for the scrubber.

Download Cut Sheet

Topics: Scrubbers, NOx