Catalytic Oxidation of Dichloromethane and Perchloroethylene: Laboratory and Industrial Scale Studies

Abstract

Development of a reliable laboratory scale test for the design of industrial catalysts is crucial. In this article, different laboratory-scale tests were compared with an industrial scale CVOCs treatment. With dichloromethane (DCM) the laboratory scale test results corresponded well to the industrial scale oxidation results. However, the perchloroethylene (PCE) conversions measured in industry were always higher than what was achieved in the laboratory scale indicating that the industrial scale catalytic incinerator operating in transient conditions is highly beneficial in PCE oxidation. It was clearly shown that in order to design high-quality laboratory scale experiments, information on complete composition and total concentration of the emission is needed but also different types of catalytic tests need to be used depending on the industrial reactor. In addition, the catalysts' performance in an industrial VOC abatement unit was examined as the oxidation efficiencies of DCM, PCE and other hydrocarbons (OHC) were compared after 3, 10 and 23 months of operation. After 23 months and 13,065 operating hours, no significant decrease in the activity of the catalysts was observed showing that the used noble metal catalysts are highly resistant towards these demanding conditions.

On the Utilization of Modified Red Mud in Dimethyl Disulfide and Methyl Mercaptan Emission Abatement

“…WRM, CRM, ARM, and PARM were crushed into a finer particle size, but they were not sieved systematically into a certain grain size. Some error in the results comes from the gas analysis, e.g., in our earlier experiments, we estimated that in the laboratory scale experiments, the analysis error is ±2 ppm [41].…”

Catalysis in VOC Abatement

“…The needed amount for pre-heating and actual temperature needed in catalytic oxidation of VOC emission mixture depends strongly on VOCs to be treated. For solvent emissions, generally temperatures around 350°C are sufficient in an industrialscale treatment, but for CVOCs and SVOCs the temperature needs to be higher, even up to 500°C [3,188]. Figure 4 shows the results of catalytic oxidation of several organic compounds over a Pt catalyst.…”

Challenges in Catalysis for Sustainability

“…After oxidation, the product gases are washed with NaOH scrubbers. The purification level of over 99% can be achieved with the incinerator, the activity of which has been shown to be very stable after one year of continuous operation [69][70][71].…”