Baker Furnace Blog-Cleaning the Air You Breathe Part 2

The Use of Thermal Oxidizers for Air Pollution Abatement

As a continuation of our blog last month we would like to discuss the use of Thermal Oxidizers for air pollution abatement in this month’s blog. Although most people have never heard of them, thermal oxidizers help clean harmful pollutants from the air we breathe.

Factories, refineries, and power plants can emit a wide variety of air pollutants, and these emissions can contain carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and even lead and ground level ozone. Tiny particles, known as particulate matter, can combine with these pollutants in the air to form hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds.

To protect the earth and the air we breathe, governments now regulate industrial emissions. To meet the regulations many chemical plants use thermal oxidizers to remove pollutants before they enter the atmosphere. Recuperative thermal oxidizers help manufacturers clean the air you breathe in a more efficient and cost-effective way.

How Thermal Oxidizers Clean the Air

Basic thermal oxidizers contain a blower system, inlet tube, combustion chamber, and several smaller components. They work by heating the air to very high temperatures, which destroys the polluting compounds. Blowers direct process air into the combustion chamber where natural gas, heated to high temperatures, break hazardous compounds into their smaller, harmless components. Clean air then enters the atmosphere. Unfortunately, much of the natural gas heat used to destroy the pollutants is lost into the atmosphere as well, at significant financial cost to the manufacturer.

Recuperative thermal oxidizers are the next generation of thermal oxidizers in that they can recover some of the heat lost in the operation of basic thermal oxidizers. Instead of moving directly into the atmosphere after treatment, the hot air passes through the heat exchanger a second time to preheat the incoming process air stream. This additional step can provide tremendous costs savings because recovering the heat helps minimize the use of natural gas in the heating process.

Baker Furnace has been an industry leader in custom industrial pollution control system engineering and manufacturing for more than 25 years. Our skilled team specializes in making recuperative thermal oxidizers and other pollution abatement systems for industrial air pollution control. Baker Furnace thermal oxidizer systems destroy 99.9 percent of volatile organic compounds from air. Follow us on social media for up-to-the-minute news on recuperative thermal oxidizers, industrial furnaces, and more.