Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BSChE-5
1. Settling Chamber
The simplest devices for controlling particulates are settling chambers consisting of nothing
more than wide places in the exhaust flue where larger particles can settle, usually with a baffle
to slow the emission stream. Obviously, only very large particulates (>100 μ) can be efficiently
removed in settling chambers.
2. Cyclone
Possibly the most popular, economical, and effective means of controlling particulates is the
cyclone. Figure 1 shows a simple schematic. The dirty air is blasted into a conical cylinder, but off
centerline. This creates a violent swirl within the cone, much like a centrifuge. The heavy solids
migrate to the wall of the cylinder, where they slow down due to friction, slide down the cone, and
finally exit at the bottom. The clean air is in the middle of the cylinder and exits out the top.
6. Wet Scrubbers
Wet scrubbers, as already discussed, can remove gaseous pollutants by simply dissolving them
in the water. Alternatively, a chemical (such as lime) may be injected into the scrubber water that
then reacts with the pollutants. This is the basis for most SO2 removal techniques.
7. Adsorption
Adsorption is a useful method when it is possible to bring the pollutant into contact with an
efficient adsorber, such as activated carbon, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Adsorber for Removing Gaseous Air Pollutants
8. Incineration
Incineration or flaring is used when an organic pollutant can be oxidized to CO2 and water as
shown in Figure 6. A variation of incineration is catalytic combustion, in which the temperature
of the reaction is lowered by the use of a catalyst that mediates the reaction.