Organic vapour like benzene, toluene, acetone, and alcohol are many times allowed to escape to the atmosphere either during process or loading or transfer.
Process Description:
Organic vapours along with air are sucked in to the carbon bed adsorbers. If the concentration is high, then a prechiller is used to remove excess organic solvent by chilling. The carbon bed adsorbs the organic matter and the air is vented out.
Adsorption is a complex phenomenon and depends on:
- Pressure
- Temperature
- Inlet concentration
- Bed parameters
- Velocities
- Dynamic efficiency of adsorbent
- The adsorbent used is activated carbon in granular forms.
- Regeneration of carbon bed is done by using live steam or using hot nitrogen. The organic solvent evaporates and is condensed and separated by decantation.
Regeneration can also be achieved by using water ring vacuum pump followed by adsorption of the vapour in lean solution.
If the recovery desired is up to 70% then by simply chilling the vapour, solvent can be recovered. For still better results, cold adsorption with vacuum regeneration in employed where the recovery is up to 99%.
Systems supplied so far:
- Benzene Vapour Recovery Systems : For tank farm for Kothari Sugar, Chennai.
- Benzene Vapour Recovery Systems: At the benzene gantry loading 550 metric tonnes per day benzene for Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. Mahul, Mumbai. Asia’s first BVRU installed in 2005.
- Toluene Vapour Recovery Systems: For Asian Paints Ltd. at Patencheru, Ankleshwar and Bulandsahar. Three systems operational from 2001.