Experimental and numerical investigations into temperature distributions and VOC conversion rate of RTO

As regulations for controlling VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) emissions have become more and more stringent, RTO (Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer) which involves heat exchange and storage, combustion and reaction processes has to be further optimised for enhancing the VOC treatment efficiency and reducing energy consumption. In this paper, influences of operating temperature distributions and internal flow fields on gas-out VOC concentration have been studied with experimental investigation and CFD numerical simulation. Experimental results shows that combustion temperature (around the combustor) plays more critical role than thermal storage bed temperature for affecting VOC flow-out concentration. By examining the internal flow and temperature distributions, modelling results demonstrate that fast heat transfer takes place in thermal ceramic beds and high temperature areas are formed around the combustor. At about 20 seconds after a bed working for gas-in flow, the heat transfer has demonstrated obvious attenuating. The research suggests that it is very challenging for simultaneously maintaining low gas-out VOC concentration and keeping low fuel consumption and low combustion temperature in RTOs.