(470a) Continuous Voc(Volatile Organic Compounds) Concentrators by Thermal Swing Honeycomb Rotor Adsorbent

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) are essential to the modern human society and industry as fuel for transportation etc. But when it is involved by ultraviolet rays after VOC spread in the atmosphere and becomes an air-fuel mixture body of nitrogen oxide(NOx), it causes air pollution by generating toxic substances such as photochemical oxidant or suspended particulate matter. Therefore it is regulated by EU orders (Gothenburg protocol) in Europe and by Clean Air Act in U.S.A. In addition, in recent years, the conventional concentrators could not process VOC in some situations because of recent trend of severe environmental regulations and complex sources of pollution. To correspond to such situations, Seibu Giken Co., Ltd. have developed a new VOC concentrator by improvements in the removal efficiency of adsorptive honeycomb rotors, the activating system of adsorbent and other chemical/ mechanical aspects. (1)High-efficiency honeycomb rotors of adsorbent An adsorption honeycomb rotor is manufactured by wash coat of hydrophobic zeolite in ceramic fiber honeycomb with an inorganic binder. We exhaustively improved many aspects such as adsorbent materials, binders, and size of honeycomb channels. Thus we developed two types of high efficiency rotors, i.e. a high-performance model and a low pressure loss type. (2)High temperature activation systems. Discharged gas from production sites of semiconductors and liquid crystal-related materials includes high boiling point VOC such as DMSO and MEA, and reactive VOC easy to polymerize. Such VOC is hard to be desorbed even in a standard temperature of 180-200 deg in regeneration step and is accumulated in a honeycomb rotor, causing degradation of the concentrator. To solve this issue, we developed two types of activation systems which can activate and regenerate the adsorbent rotors on site. One is a water flushing type and the other is a high temperature regeneration type.