APPLICATIONS:

Petrochemical
    Hydrocarbon vapors from process & loading facilities

Plastics Processing
    Solvents from printing presses

Land Fill
    Vent gas from landfill

Painting/Coating
    Gas from oven operation

Municipal
    Odors

 

Products:
Incinerators - Fume Thermal / R.T.O. - Catalytic

Oxidation of volatile organic compounds (V.O.C's) in an air stream (fumes) before discharge to the atmosphere is likely the most cost effective way to treat organic fumes. However, in applications where air is not very dirty and contains only one or two particular solvents, solvent recovery by activated carbon adsorption may be cost effective because of the value of reused solvent.

Enders offers incineration either thermal or catalytic both with indirect heat recovery, or the former with thermal regenerative heat recovery. If the fume to be treated is dirty it may foul preheater tubes and make heat recovery difficult. If no heat recovery is to be considered and particularly if the fume is hot (i.e. hot fume discharging a curing oven) the catalytic incinerator might be the better choice since it requires the lowest amount of preheat. Preheating the fume to 650oF or 750oF will likely be all that is required and a direct fired gas/oil burner can be used for that. A thermal incinerator, on the other hand, will require about double that temperature as a minimum.

Thermal Fume Incinerators

Example of Thermal Fume Incinerator with heat recovery, processing 36,060 scfm of fume.

Combustion chamber volume must be such that fume residence time is ½ second minimum at 1400oF minimum. These conditions are for v.o.c.'s (in air) which are easiest to destroy. Treating v.o.c's in air which are more difficult to oxidize completely, requires higher temperature and/or residence time.

Because of high combustion chamber temperature, heat recovery (heating the incinerator incoming fume with heat from outgoing gas) is required. A tubular heat exchanger is shown with incoming fume flowing on inside of tubes (surface easiest to clean). A burner brings the fume to combustion chamber temperature before it enters the chamber.

Large Thermal Fume Incinerator

Incinerator can incorporate either "thermal regenerative exchange" or "indirect heat exchange".

  1. with indirect heat recovery; fume flows (may be dirty) through the inside of exchanger tubes (more easily cleaned) and preheating it with hot, clean flue gas discharging the incinerator and flowing on the outside of the tubes;
  2. with "thermal regenerative" heat recovery; hot clean gas, discharging the incinerator flows through a bed of "ceramic stones" and then, when stones get hot, switch to flowing fume through the same bed there-by preheating the fume.

Catalytic Fume Incinerators

Since today's catalyst are "poisoned" by many solvents, all solvents (also their amounts) in the fume must be identified and matched with a catalyst the fume will not poison. In the event a non-poisoning catalyst isn't available, choose thermal incineration.

In general the fume is first filtered and preheated before oxidation. Preheat comes, first, from hot treated gas leaving the incinerator and then from a direct fired gas/oil burner. Burner brings fume stream to the temperature required for desired destruction (usually 650oF to 750oF)

Catalytic Incinerator For Oven Fumes

Example of low Cost catalytic incinerator installed at American National Can's "Cicero Avenue Plant" in Chicago.

7,000 SCFM of fume containing solvents from a can coating line curing oven at 250oF, enter (via a fan) a gas fired preheater inside the facility where the fume is preheated to 750oF. Fume then flows to a roof mounted platinum catalyst bed where 98+ % of the organics are destroyed. Heat recovery was not incorporated since expense of heat exchanger, space & maintenance cost more than fuel to preheat by 500oF.