VOC Abatement

Under EC legislation the operators of most processes that produce Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) now have to install some form of abatement to meet their environmental obligations.

For processes that produce substantial quantities of VOCs the Best Available Technology solution is the thermal oxidiser, either with integrated energy recovery (recuperative) or by direct recovery to the process exhaust stream (regenerative).

Some process operators with low quantities of VOCs and high air volumes need to clean their airborne emissions, but until recently thermal oxidation would have been assessed as uneconomic. Now that is changing with the development of concentrators which treat the exhaust emissions and increase the effective concentration by a factor of 10 or 15:1, possibly rising to 20:1 in the future.

Aker Yards in France, builder of the world famous Queen Mary II Cruise Liner, paint a large range of substantial ships using airless spray techniques, had very high volume air emissions of 330,000 Nm3/h, but a relatively low VOC loading of 170 mg/Nm3. These numbers would previously been considered as outside the scope of thermal oxidation. After calling in Babcock Wanson to help with an abatement solution, a design was finalised using 2 separate roto-concentrators.  The VOCs were increased to a workable level of 2340 mg/Nm3, at which level thermal oxidation is highly appropriate. The emissions were then treated in a 3 Tower Regenerative Oxidiser, which enables Aker to comply with the strictest emissions of CO, NOx, and VOCs.