PlaTec - Electrical methods for exhaust gas treatment

Many industrial production processes produce exhaust air that is contaminated with volatile hydrocarbon compounds, so-called VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Just to comply with the many international legal regulations, these pollutants must be neutralised to such an extent that the exhaust air meets the relevant environmental and health guidelines. Until now, the standard practice in industry has been to incinerate waste. This still mainly involves the use of thermal oxidation plants in which the pollutants are incinerated with fossil natural gas at 800°C. This very energy-intensive process is increasingly problematic for cost and environmental reasons, as it produces vast amounts of additional and climate-damaging CO2.

In contrast, the use of all-electric methods such as plasma oxidation, electrostatic precipitators, wet absorption or photooxidation have significant advantages: they consume significantly less energy, are clean, safe, space-saving and require very little maintenance. Although some of the technologies are already industrially mature, there are still challenges such as efficient dimensioning, type of treatment, number of components, etc., that need to be addressed. This is because the challenges vary greatly depending on whether food, pharmaceuticals or chemicals are produced in a plant. Some waste gases are also very hot or highly enriched.

The aim of the strategic partnership is to offer better and more efficient all-electric exhaust air solutions using joint resources. At UMTEC, the appropriate infrastructure has been created to simulate processes and analyse gases, liquids or solids according to standard protocols or advanced methods. Naturally on an industrial scale.