Pharma manufacturer in Ireland chooses ERG technology
A UK company specialising in odour control systems has installed a new gas scrubber unit at pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Ireland.
Some pharmaceutical manufacturing processes can produce gases laden with aggressive acid and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These must be treated before they can be safely vented to atmosphere. The new V-tex unit is designed to remove greater than 99% of the acidic contaminants.
Hot off-gases from the pharmaceutical reactor are pumped tangentially into the V-tex scrubber chamber, where they create a vortex. Simultaneously, caustic liquor is injected into the top of the V-tex chamber via a patented ‘cobra’ nozzle unit that creates a planar atomised spray. The action of the liquor droplets passing through the gaseous vortex generates intensive gas contact allowing the caustic to react with, and neutralise, the acids in the off-gas stream. The neutralised gases are then passed to the facility’s existing stainless steel rich vent system, where the VOCs are treated and recovered.
The design of the V-tex scrubber had to meet tough requirements set by the client. The vessel was constructed from multiple layers of laminated GRP to comply as a category 4 rated pressure vessel operating at up to 4 bar and 90°C. It was then lined with ECTFE (ethylene chloro-trifluoroethlyene) for extra chemical and corrosion resistance. The whole unit had to be ATEX rated for operation in an explosion risk area.
V-tex is claimed to have a lower energy consumption than a venturi scrubber, is a compact design, making for easy installation in height restricted or tight locations and has an almost maintenance free operation when compared to packed tower scrubbers owing to the absence of any packing material to foul.
ERG managing director James Scott-Bowden, said: “V-tex scrubbers really are the optimum and most economic technology for tough pharmaceutical gas cleaning applications. We already have dozens of installations at leading pharmaceutical companies, however the high technical specification demanded by this latest project demonstrates that V-tex units can be designed to operate in most challenging production environments.”