Flue Gas Treatment with Activated Carbon Injection (A.C.I.)
Bolzano, Italy
Controlling dioxins and mercury emissions using Sodimate’s Pneumatic Transfer solution to upgrade an Activated Carbon Injection system
Sodimate designed, supplied, assembled and started-up an installation for discharging and metering Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) for the Bolzano waste incinerator.
This facility is a property of ECO-CENTER, a company whose main activity is waste management and wastewater treatment throughout the South Tyrol region of Italy.
This site burns 130,000 tons of waste per year, producing 78 gigawatt hours of thermal energy for the urban heating network and 89 gigawatt hours of electrical energy for the electrical network each year.
After the waste incineration, the fumes are conveyed through a complex treatment process involving various reagents (hydrated lime, soda ash, powder activated carbon, etc.).
The Sodimate expertise was an integral part in the Active Carbon Injection (A.C.I.) stage, widely used to control dioxins and mercury emissions.
Previous installation
The previous installation, commissioned in 2013 lacked both accuracy and reliability:
- Flow issues in the silo (arches)
- Leaks
- Inaccurate metering
- Uneven powder distribution between the pneumatic lines
The new SODIMATE installation
SODIMATE was able to redesign the installation and provide a viable solution, from the storage silo down to the rotary airlock inlets, where the powder is pneumatically conveyed.
The new SODIMATE Activated Carbon Injection installation includes:
- A double silo cone made of steel (silo capacity is 1,200 ft³/9,200 gal), feeding into two metering lines.
- The first metering line includes a pneumatic and manual slide gate (to isolate the silo during maintenance operations), a mechanical bin activator ZDM and a metering screw DDMR (feedrate range from 11 to 66 lb/h)
- The second metering line includes the same parts, with an additional metering screw DDMR and a screw conveyor DMR. This is a security redundancy to bypass the first line.
The equipment complies with the site standards including European explosive areas restrictions (ATEX).
To ensure the proper operation of the installation, several sensors are set along the process (level, rotation, temperature, position, anti-blockage switches).
Thus, the issues of the previous installation were rectified by our experience and the quality of the Sodimate equipment:
- robust equipment
- continuous extraction
- accurate and dust-free volumetric metering
- ease of use and maintenance
