Adwest provides tower RTO thermal oxidizer solutions with low cost and high benefit for ethanol, wood products, paint finishing, flavors & fragrances, food processing, building products, petrochemical and pharmaceutical applications. Our multi-tower technology can provide up to 99%+ emission reductions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), acid and malodorous process streams.

Operating flow control of a tower-type RTO Thermal Oxidizer – Inlet/Outlet/Purge

The VOC laden air is directed by the flow control (poppet/butterfly) valve mechanism to flow through up to 9 beds into the combustion chamber where the VOCs are purified. These RTO ceramic media beds are designed to provide up to 97% primary heat recovery and produce very high rates of heat transfer. This results in the air being preheated very close to the required oxidation temperature (1500 to 1700 degrees/f) by the time it reaches the combustion chamber requiring minimal auxiliary fuel input to the RTO system.

The clean air then exits the combustion chamber through an outlet bed or beds that have been previously cooled. As the air passes through these beds, it is cooled by the same heat transfer process. After passing through the outlet beds the air exits the RTO system at a temperature only slightly higher than the inlet temperature.

After several minutes the first set of inlet beds becomes depleted of heat while the second set of beds (outlet) becomes preheated with the heat liberated from the combustion process. At this point the flow of air through the beds is switched with the previous inlet beds acting as the outlet beds and the former outlet beds acting as the purge bed. The purged bed becomes the inlet bed. In this way each bed periodically extracts heat from the clean gas stream exiting the combustion chamber then releases this heat into the polluted gas entering the combustion chamber. A dedicated purge bed is utilized with tower RTOs to assure 100% capture of the VOCs and treatment on the inlet bed side. This method is thermal regeneration. The combination of thermal oxidation and regenerative heat recovery allows the RTO Thermal Oxidizer system to efficiently destroy VOC laden air with minimal operating costs.