Pollution control in the cocoa industry

21 April 2011 – Regenerative oxidisers ensure high system uptime reliability, which is very important for food industry and its 24 hour production schedules. In addition, regenerative oxidisers require little maintenance and upkeep. Their low energy use allows them to run efficiently and maintain a high destruction efficiency well into the future. However, the high levels of fats, aerosols, and particles, typical of cocoa production emissions, could eventually cause a standard system to break down and thus reduce its efficiency.

Dürr Environmental and Energy Systems’ regenerative oxidiser is an efficient pollution control system that meets the specific requirements of the cocoa industry, as far as pollutants and odours are concerned.

The oxidiser has just been installed by two cocoa producers who wanted to reduce their emissions. One of these companies installed it on a new production line in Germany while the other adapted an existing production line located in France.

The Dürr Ecopure RTO 3050 regenerative oxidiser was started up in 2010 at the customer’s plant in Germany. The system has an extremely long lasting and rugged design and is not prone to breakdowns caused by a great variety of pollutants. This level of sturdiness is achieved by a special valve design, a self cleaning bake out cycle, the physical composition of the equipment (anti corrosion stainless steel in this instance), a high quality refractory lining, and many other features. The plant’s modular design enables a production capacity increase at a later time. High energy efficiency is achieved by the choice of heat exchanger material in connection with a flameless burner system.

In the other case, the customer in France registers a much smaller exhaust air flow rate. For this reason, a regenerative compact thermal oxidiser, a Dürr Ecopure CTO, is used. In combination with the highly efficient electrostatic precipitators used to remove particles and aerosols, a major part of the fats contained in the air are recycled. The cleaned condensate coming out of the fat separator can be discharged to the factory’s waste water treatment plant without causing any further environmental problems. This combination of technologies has been implemented for the first time globally and allows regenerative thermal oxidation to be built simply and cost effectively for small exhaust volumes too.

Both plants have been running for a few months now, and initial measurements show that the required limits are met, and in some cases, far exceeding expectations.

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