Odour Control System: Gases and Particulate Matter

Every day that passes, environmental regulations are improving in all areas around the world. On the one hand, the perception of carrying out mitigating measures that collaborate with the environment and the environment has been improved and, on the other, progress has also been made in regulations in the internal work areas of companies, which are directly related to the quality of life and health of people. In general, there are several types of pollutants in the air, but we could group them into three large groups which include for odour control system.

Odors Gases Particulate Matter

On this occasion I wanted to explain from a conceptual point of view the processes and components that make up the GT or MP systems, where they all have the same elements, only changing the type of filter used and the way of filtering.

The abatement of particulate matter, gases and odors in industries is an urgent need to improve air quality. This post offers a total vision about the functions, advantages and limitations of the systems that involve ventilation and filtration systems.

Filtration systems are known to be relevant technologies when it comes to decontamination and preservation of the environment. This is a practically absolute truth. Within the entire range of filters offered on the market, as they are a traditional and efficient solution in terms of retention of particulate material, sleeve filters occupy a preferential place, with equipment for removing gases being a little more dispersed.

The foregoing is basically due to the fact that the particulate material is not subdivided into components, that is, in the case of PM only the size of the particle matters, however, the gases have different types of treatments or ways to abate, absorb or adsorb the pollutants depending what the specific type is, call it SOx, NOx, VOC, NH3, H2S, etc.

Emission control systems

On the one hand, it is necessary to extract the pollutants generated in a specific place (source)

And on the other, separate the pollutants from the air flow to evacuate the latter to the environment with the minimum of impurities or within the parameters allowed by the particular legislation of each geography.

It is important to clarify that there are no systems with 100% efficiency, so pollutants will always be generated in any process, either in the workplace or into the environment.

Issue

The emission corresponds to the industrial process that produces a generation of dust basically due to the architecture of the particular process. Emissions are generated in a source, which can be a working point, a chimney that releases combusted gases into the atmosphere, grinding processes, loading and unloading of granulated or powdered materials, welding processes, gaseous emissions in welding equipment. Purification plants, smelting processes and in general any process that allows pollutants at rest to break their inertia to be projected into a state of suspension.

Source control like commercial air purifiers, which is related to the projection of pollutants into the atmosphere surrounding the emission point, is a very relevant item in the design of emission control systems, firstly because poor control of this part makes the system does not solve the underlying problem that is to extract the pollutants from the work points and, therefore, there is uncontrolled emission into the environment or the atmosphere in the work places.

Emissions of PM, Gases and odors are generated in practically all industrial processes where there is transport of materials, variation in size of solid product, in 100% of the facilities of WWTP or Treatment and drying of sludge and many other industrial processes such as Crushing Plants, Truck Loading, Cement Plants, Drying Plants, Food Plants, Tobacco Plants, etc.

Harvest

The collection can be defined as the engineering solution to encapsulate the sources, control the emissions and extract them in a controlled way to a specific place. Predominantly at this point, the design of adequate enclosures and suction hood geometry is very important; In order to achieve good efficiency and effectiveness, it is necessary to work with adequate capture speeds and drag angles inside the hoods that avoid as much as possible the dynamic pressure losses at the mouth of the hoods.

Enclosures must be designed according to each particular process and interfering with normal production flow should be avoided as far as possible without an emissions control system; there are fixed, mobile, flexible or rigid enclosures. Construction materials will always depend on the process data and the source that needs to be controlled, such as: temperature, ambient humidity, corrosively, abrasiveness, etc.

Evacuation

Although it is true that it is the fan that evacuates from the filtration equipment to the environment, as an equipment it is as important as the filter itself, since it is the one that induces the necessary energy into the system to transport the flow of air and pollutants, from the source at the point of emission, to the environment in a discharge stack. It must allow overcoming the loss of load due to enclosures, hoods, ducts and filter.

The fundamental objective of this equipment is to produce the movement of the air mass through the filtering system and equipment, which is why the selection of the appropriate model is important. The flow conditions and pressure losses required by the ducts and filtering equipment must be taken into account, as well as the operating conditions, humidity, temperature, and altitude of the facilities, among others.

While it is true that the different components have a clear importance within the operation of the system, it is not uncommon to find comments of failure in filtration equipment when the system does not function properly. And it is that the operation, the efficiency of the system and achieving the expected results is directly related to the design of the system.