Protea Limited applications
Protea is the most experienced company in the UK in using FTIR gas analyser to measure emissions. Through running a UKAS-accredited test house and being a manufacturer of gas analysers, we have been involved in FTIR as a supplier and end-user for 10 years.
Total Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) is a common measurement required from industrial emissions. Commonly, a single measurement value is obtained through the use of a Flame Ionisation Detection (FID) analyser. The pyrolysis of the gas stream in a FID analyser allows it to make a measurement of the carbon content of the gas stream. FID analyser cannot indicate the relative abundances of different organic species in a gas stream and often have widely different responses for different gases. However, they are taken as the standard reference method for Total VOC emission measurements.
Protea has used our VOC gas analysers in many projects requiring the monitoring of complex mixes of VOCs. In the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, VOC abatement plants such as scrubbers and carbon-bed systems are typical installations where the use of Protea analysers and our VOC analysis expertise have proved valuable to plant operators. They prove a very powerful and flexible tool in both process gas measurements and VOC emissions monitoring. In the laboratory, Protea can deliver instruments with all the chemometric software and support to enable users to measure hundreds of gases.
BS EN 14181 is a quality assurance standard relevant to plants operating under the Large Combustion Plant (LCPD) and Waste Incineration (WID) Directives. Quality Assurance Level 2 (QAL2) of this standard involves the parallel testing of the plant automated measurement systems (AMS) against a certified test house, making measurements with a comparative standard.
Protea has deployed FTIR gas analysers in many projects requiring the monitoring of complex mixes of VOCs. In the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, scrubbers and carbon-bed abatement plants are typical installations where the use of Protea FTIR analysers and our chemometric expertise have proved valuable to plant operators. They prove an invaluable tool in process measurements and emissions monitoring. In the laboratory, Protea can deliver instruments with all the chemometric software and support to enable users to measure hundreds of gases.
A customer had a requirement for continuous Ethyl Acrylate monitoring. The process operations emit multiple Acrylate species, all at low concentrations, but only Ethyl Acrylate being reportable to the EA under the terms of the IPC permit. A 204M FTIR analyser was deployed and a chemometric model was built specifically to target Acrylates, with the purpose of separating and accurately quantify the target Ethyl Acrylate species.
CFCs are used in the manufacture of insecticides and herbicides and the environmental impact of their use must be well controlled. The treatment of CFC emissions to reduce the emissions in the intermediary steps of production needs to be monitored with 100% efficiency. Protea’s portable CFC analysers and continuous CFC monitoring systems can be configured with various sample inlets and analytical modelling to enable multi-samples to be measured on the one system. This means that both inlet and outlet to abatement systems can be monitored using the one analyser.
The chloride process of titanium dioxide (TiO2) pigment manufacture first converts titania-containing ores to TiCl4 via a carbochlorination reaction at a high temperature in a chlorinator in the presence of chlorine gas and petroleum coke added as a reductant.
Commonly, activated carbon beds are used as abatement systems on plant, with emissions being reduced by adsorption onto the bed. The efficiency of any abatement system is critical to its operation, not just in ensuring emissions are reduced as much as possible, but an efficient bed has cost savings for the operator.
A large pharmaceutical plant runs a Thermal Oxidiser on plant to incinerate their solvent-containing gas streams before emission. When the oxidiser is offline, then the plant must monitor the release of solvent to the atmosphere. A ProtIR 204C fixed monitoring system was installed that continually measures 24 plant solvents, including Acetone, Cyclohexane, DCM, DMF, IPA, MIBK, Toluene and THF. Given the high levels that are possible, the system has an active dilution system, reducing the concentration of the measured gas in the analyser to levels that can be analysed simply. Chemometric modelling enables interferences from the overlapping absorption spectra to be accounted for, ensuring accurate analysis of all 24 gases.