Pacific Rim - EPA BACT TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT

PROBLEM:

The EPA is constantly striving to improve the BACT standards for environmentally challenging conditions within each industry. The EPA updates their standards through research at its own facilities and through consortiums with qualified agencies and firms.

Historically, most wastewater odor control has been done with water based scrubbing technology. This works well for some of the odors common to these facilities like hydrogen sulfide, but this methodology is limited to water soluble compounds. This research we participated in addressed the removal efficiency for odorous and toxic compounds that are NOT soluble in water so the EPA could establish BACT standards for these compounds.

SOLUTION:

Pacific Rim designed, built and operated the pilot scale research scrubber used in this testing to determine removal efficiency for various organic compounds entrained in air.

During BACT testing, the modular pilot scale scrubbing equipment was set up at East Bay Municipal Water District near San Francisco. The research configuration used in this testing included two sequential counter current scrubber stages. An air/water separator between the two stages isolated the recirculated water from each of the two stages, thereby allowing each stage to have a unique and separate process chemistry.

The components shown in the photos to the right comprise only a portion of the entire array of components. Portions of this same set were used to perform drinking water stripping tests for City of Beverly Hills, packing certification tests for Lantec Products and many other studies.

When this equipment is supported by the Pacific Rim mobile laboratory, analytical results are essentially immediate. This combination is ideal for the development for new abatement control technology and (as shown here) for performance testing.

The pilot scrubber is utilizing a portion of the foul air being routed to the larger permanent scrubber to the left. The subsequent photos are details of this equipment configuration.

This equipment is assembled like a large erector set. The configuration is modified to meet the specific requirements of each project. These photos are details of the above equipment configuration.

A different configuration of this modular pilot scale scrubbing equipment set up at the Pacific Rim test facility in Adelanto, California (no longer in operation).