For an industrial customer in the south of the Netherlands, HMVT is conducting an extensive pilot test to find out which zeolite achieves the best results in a future air purification solution. This is necessary because organic hydrocarbons are released during the company’s core process. So, with a future expansion in mind, vapor cleaning must be scaled up. A possible way of vapor cleaning could be catalytic oxidation, during which the vapours are cleaned autothermally without the formation of nitrogen oxides. The released heat can be put to good use. So, this is a very environmentally friendly solution all around.

Challenge

The main challenge here is that on the one hand we have to flatten the influent peaks while on the other hand we have to increase the average concentration somewhat so that a future catalytic oxidation unit can remain as small as possible and operate as economically as possible. However, no vapor is the same so before a final vapor cleaning installation will be implemented, we decided to test the effectiveness of various zeolites. To do this we use a mobile zeolite test unit, with which we can subject three different types of zeolites to adsorption and desorption tests over the course of several weeks. We monitor the results with semi-continuous FID measurements.

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