Gas scrubbing with V-tex® scrubbing technology
V-tex® is an outstanding scrubbing and stripping technology for gas scrubbing applications. A V-tex® gas scrubber provides users with a highly efficient scrubbing/stripping operation in a unit which is more compact than traditional packed towers. And thanks to the opposed-jet spray nozzle at the heart of the technology, V-tex® gas scrubbers offer flexible, robust operability and unrivalled, maintenance-free availability, across a wide variety of applications.
Background to the V-tex® gas scrubber
V-tex®gas scrubber technology was first employed in response to the tough gas scrubbing requirements in the nuclear industry to scrub both gaseous and particulate contamination while minimising the risk of fouling the scrubber internals and spray nozzle blockages, thereby minimizing maintenance downtime and reducing worker exposure risks to hazardous maintenance activities
With the partial privatisation of the UK nuclear industry in the 1990s, this unique patented technology has become available for other gas scrubber applications across other process industries, where it is particularly suited to gas scrubbing challenges where traditional packed tower and tray scrubbers cannot cope, or where space is limited.
Over the last 15 years, the technology has been developed and improved and today there are more than 400 V-tex® gas scrubbers and gas strippers in successful operation across a broad range of process industries and leading global companies.
V-tex® gas scrubber’s innovative design
The secret to the success of the V-tex® gas scrubber is its simplicity of design and the innovative technology of its scrubbing liquor spray nozzles. The scrubber vessel itself is an empty cylindrical chamber. The foul gas is fed into the chamber radially setting up a vortex flow motion as it circulates inside the vessel. The scrubbing liquor is fed into the heart of the gas vortex via a pressurized feed through opposed jet nozzles which create an array of fine droplets. High intensity mixing of gas and scrub liquor droplets takes place in the vortex, setting up the conditions for highly efficient mass transfer between the gas and the scrub liquor. The now dirty liquor is then “flung” to the walls of the chamber where it then falls to the collection chambers at the bottom of the vessel. Meanwhile, the clean gas exists through the roof of the chamber. This high energy / high intensity gas-liquid contact means that a V-tex® gas scrubber can be sized at about 30% of the height of a traditional packed tower gas scrubber. V-tex® gas scrubbers require less maintenance as with no internal packing they do not require the long periods of downtime for packing cleanout and renewal associated with traditional packed tower scrubbers.
V-tex® gas scrubbers also have an asdditional major advantage over packed tower scrubbers as scrubbing efficiency is largely independent of gas flowrate, making them suitable for batch applications where the gas flowrate can vary widely from zero to full flow. Under these conditions, traditional scrubbers would struggle as packed towers typically require stable gas flows to maintain a good distribution of liquor and to avoid liquor channeling through the packing
V-tex® gas scrubber technology is available from ERG and its global network of licensees.
We also have a number of V-tex® pilot plants, which are available to be installed at customer sites for pilot trials, to prove the V-tex® technology for customer specific applications. These are especially useful for proving the V-tex® technology for customer specific gas scrubbing applications and can be a valuable asset in the of evaluation of different process routes and for generating the base data to build a business case for a full scale project investment.
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