Login

Solutions for catalytic filtration in the cement industry: Presented by: Pietro Aresta, FLSmidth (Denmark)

Filmed at Cemtech Europe 2015, 20-23 September, Intercontinental Hotel, Vienna, Austria.

Already a subscriber? Login

Subscribe to get access to all News, Articles and Video sections of the CemNet.com website.

Subscribe

Thank you Mr. Chairman, thank you everybody. Today I said I will talk about solution for catalytic filtration in the cement industry. As anybody knows the regulations are getting tighter and not only in terms of emission of particulate matter, but also in terms of emission of gaseous pollutants, included components such as NOx, NH3, O-HAPss, organic compounds especially in US market for now, and probably they are coming and that called for some solutions and in particular for FLSmidth, for one catalytic technology.

First of all what is a catalyst? A catalyst is a compound which helps increase the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed itself, and can be seen as if we have of course a mountain which represents the energy that the reactions needs to occur instead of climbing the mountain we can go through digging a tunnel and this is what the catalyst basically does, so we don't need to increase the thermal content in the system basically we don't need to reach extremely high temperatures.

What FLSmidth does it basically presents two solutions the CataMax and the CataFlex and we will discuss now more in detail these two products. First of the CataMax catalytic solution we've timelined here you can see that the development of the started very early when we heard about the new emmision regulation in the US.

By the way the emmision regulations started in US right this month September 2015. So it was a long run and we started developing this concept, and then in 2009, 2010, we have constructed the first test unit in our R&D facilities in Denmark and we started testing this this solution.

Then in one year later, we started with a slip stream unit in a US plant and having some very good results which allows us to present the product on the market in 2012 and those in the IEEE the showcase of this unit same period. Then we are tested in other same period in the serial. Now the three cement plants a slipstream unit and finally in 2015 were being awarded by two orders one in epc cellular both for a full scale installation in cement plants, but what are we talking about? We're talking the solution with catalytic elements embedded with catalysts where the dust is filtered on the surface of the candle, and this is very important because if you consider for example in SCR solution and monolith we have a problem if the gas is bearing some dust, this dust can fool the catalyst and can also bring with it some healing methods, some possible poison for the catalyst, so there is a special care for avoiding deactivation of the catalyst which here is strongly, strongly reduced because all the dust included possible poison is filtered before entering the candle and so all the catalytic reactions can happen with only clean air, clean gas. And so you can see you can reduce all these components of course NH3 with NOx and are harmless outcome. This is how the Framic element looks like, you can see they're rigid so they don't need any cage and of course special cares are considered likewise bags in order to avoid any velocity peak in order to keep the no stress on the ceramic elements keep a very good life time in the system. And this is how our first bio testing our R&D facility in Denmark look like we started testing not with just air but simulating the condition in a kiln mill environment so those in the right amount of a representative CO2, oxygen, nitrogen, moisture and, of course, using kiln mill dust.

Changing the temperature you can see big insulation because we went to 300 degrees and probably even higher to see the behavior on all the possible temperature and of course, dosing the right pollutants in order to remove themselves and tracking and monitoring all the process parameter, pressure, temperature and so on.

These are the five twins included the one in Denmark. Which are being used as a slipstream unit. You can see the concept of a slipstream. You have a duct bringing some gas from the plant. We're talking about 1700 cubic meters per hour. This was the design but we played a little bit also with the flow rate.

20 ceramic catalytic elements on the four plants was tested not only organic as other pollutant but also NH3 and NOx removal. This is some of the results. You can see the red line is measured limit and the inlet and outlet of organic compounds. The performance was very good. You can see that the temperature of tests it's in the 250, 270 r and the conversion rate it was above 90%.

This gave us a very good idea, I will talk about this a little bit later. About formal diet, which is one of the most present components in the organic mix. We have a reduction which is close to 100% you can see that starting from 25-30, and then the red line is really around zero.

Same temperature of course. No dependence on air to close ratio, we could play with A to close without changing the air-able efficiency in a hydrocarbons, and this is about NO2, NH3, NOx reduction. In this case we had 300 ppm of NOx coming from the plant and 25 ppm of ammonia and in the case the ammonia was completely reduced to zero because of the excess of NOx.

This can be seen if you have a SNCR unit. You can boost the production having of course ammonia slip and then all the ammonia will be, you can achieve both very good reduction of NH3, any wakes as well as NH3's leap below the limits using this unit. Of course you don't need necessarily SNCR but if you have this can give a lot of flexibility and the summaries of course gathering together filtering technology together with expertise in catalyst where the possibility of avoiding in this way as we said poisoning due to the fact that it will filter default and if we use our expertise in back filters we can think having for example bags instead of ceramic elements to use all the measures, all our expertise for example stack ages to avoid running problems of our expertise in long bags in the gas distribution is a very effective solution and this led to the CataFlex catalytic filter backs.

In particular of course we have stronger experience in filtration, but not in catalytic solutions. So we get our double efforts with other top so leader in catalytic science and we developed a new product the secure compliance with the new regulations, and this is about the CataFlex product. So the timeline starts some years after just when we have seen that we could achieve very good results in the range of 250-260 degrees where the standard fiberglass bags can exist and so we started with this idea and we developed it.

So we had the concept and then we start a testing 2013 in both Topso and us in our R&D facilities we had very good results and we started with the market product launch in January this year. Then we start testing as we will say before and we went over the first full scale commission very soon in few weeks European cement in plant so the first full scale is about to come.

How it looks like a part of the color which is yellowish greenish it looks like really like standard bag it's made up to three layer bags because each layer has a different catalytic composition and the first layer of course has a PTC membrane because we want to filter all the dust as we aid before in order to avoid any troubles to the catalyst this is one internal bag made only with fiber glass look like you can see the fibers of glass and then all the catalyst represented by the white dots embedded uniformly on the fiber glass and this again the concept you have all the pollutants and NOx plus injection of ammonia can be reduced to nitrogen and the three layers.

More in details this SCR we have the standard SCR reaction is the same concept that the reaction without the complication of the of the dust falling and it actually can be reduced to harmless nitrogen inside the system. About efficiency you can see that as we knew before starting, we can have very high efficiency about 200 degrees especially about over 230, standard temperature for fibre glass bag, we can have very high efficiency and still these tests are made having NH slip ammonia slip below 10 milligrams.

So we have a very outstanding performance. Same for O-HAPs so organic compounds removal, we have the same concept before. In this case, no reagent no absorbent is needed. It's just an oxidation which take place with the catalyst. And again we have very high efficiency when we go above clouded and outstanding and below 220.

Dioxide we know we cannot buy for months highly about 95% I would say 95-99 something like that in the operational temperature we're talking about. And this is summary you can see how it looks like through the three layers. You can see the dust, the grey bar. Five bar represents all the five group of it's of course removed at the beginning like in the scandal bag and then all the bars are reduced below the limits.

The CO could increase in these kind of technology, because if you have not perfect oxidation of the whole [xx] then you can have an increase in CO. But then we started in the last layer a special composition with a strong oxidizer, so we secure to avoid an increase in CO. So also CO is reduced should be below the limits securing compliance.

CataFlex we are talking about new bags so we have three possibilities there's flexibility of the bag itself, but the flexibility of the solution. I knew and CataFlex can be a complete new filter with the all the FLSmidth measures to secure a good operation and a long life time uni cleaning system distribution screen etc.

Of course we are strong expertise in converting ESPs into fabric filters as well as in this case into a CataFlex catalytic filter and a standard fabric filter can be converted into a catalytic filter. In this case we will analyze the system and we will suggest if needed to change something in the distribution screen in the cleaning etc or keep some of the key we can believe are reliable as we said where two test are going now one with the partial replacement of bags in Europe and one its a a full scale project is more than a test but we're bringing two containers with a lot of instrumentation because we have a lot of possibilities to test on 100% scale the whole behaviour and of course this empowers to our test in our facilities they are still on going.

Just a few minutes to recap some facts and figures so we're talking about CataMax. We said we have two full scale projects right now and four slip stream a more measure product launched some years ago, but also wishes less than one year of life has already surfaced full scale installation which will start now. Temperature in the first case CataMax is limited by the catalyst and we can go up to 400 degrees and we can operate continuously along 360 some degrees more, but this is the max of the process envelop what about the catalyst? It's the same kind of temperature we expect to run for a standard fiberglass PT feedback, no more, no less.

The catalyst is not changing this length of element, at the moment three meters for the ceramic elements, but we are sure, more than confident that this will be in the very next future expanded to extended lengths giving more flexibility. For the bags as standard bags on the market.

We are talking about in the market now the reference is 10 meter bags. FLSmidth is a pioneer in using long bags, and testing before putting on the market. So we are well confident that 10 meter bags it's absolutely given solution and could be probably in the future expanded to more than that.

Finally We can say that two technology, as I've seen in the slide before, are complementary and can execute an all in one approach in order to handle all these problems in just one solutions. They will give you a of get compliance with the current and the future emissions regulations.

In the US, they started with organic and probably we can in Europe and vice versa with NOx, especially in Austria and Germany. It's very felt argument and FLSmidth cement process technology as well as filtration a stronger is trying in order to assist you in securing the best and the most cost effective solution in order to secure compliance which this catalytic solutions hopefully in the next future, that's all and thanks for your attention.

Cemtech Europe 2024

Cemtech ASIA 2024

Cemtech MEA 2024

Cemtech Europe 2023

Cemtech Asia 2023

Cemtech MEA 2023

Cemtech Webinar 2022

Cemtech MEA 2022

Cemtech Americas 2021

Cemtech Asia 2021

Cemtech Webinar 2021

Cemtech Webinar 2020

Cemtech MEA 2021

Cemtech Virtual 2020

Cemtech Europe 2019

Cemtech Asia 2019

Cemtech MEA 2019

Cemtech Europe 2018

Cemtech Asia 2018

Cemtech MEA 2018

Cemtech Europe 2017

Cemtech Asia 2017

Cemtech MEA 2017

Cemtech Europe 2016

Cemtech Asia 2016

Cemtech MEA 2016

Cemtech Americas 2015

Cemtech Europe 2015

Cemtech Asia 2015

Cemtech MEA 2015

Cemtech Europe 2014

Cemtech MEA 2014

Cemtech Europe 2013

Cemtech Asia 2013

Cemtech Jakarta 2012

Cemtech MEA 2013

Cemtech Geneva 2012

Cemtech MEA 2012

Cemtech Europe 2011

Cemtech Europe 2010

Cemtech Middle East 2010

Cemtech Europe 2009

Cemtech Dubai 2009

Cemtech Florida 2008

Cemtech London 2008

Cemtech Singapore 2008

Cemtech Dubai 2008

Cemtech Florida 2007

Cemtech Prague 2007

Cemtech Abu Dhabi 2007

cemtech florida 2006

Cemtech Rome 2006

Cemtech Barcelona 2005