Catalytic Oxidation of Volatile Organic Compounds in Industrial Off-Gases

Processes and apparatuses for catalytic oxidation of VOCs in industrial off-gases are described, including steady state and unsteady state processes, a combined adsorption-catalytic process and an advanced method of ozone induced oxidation for low concentrated exhausts. On the basis of research and development works a series of catalytic incinerators, operating in steady state and unsteady state mode, of various capacity were designed, constructed and tested in the purification of ventilation air and off-gases from VOCs. The principles of operation of different types of catalytic incinerators and possible areas of application are discussed. For VOC concentrations 150-1000 mg/m3 unsteady state catalytic incinerators of KART type should be used, for concentrations 1000-3000 mg/m3 steady state KROT apparatuses are recommended, and for concentrations over 3000 mg/m3 up to 7000 mg/m3 installations TKM-250. It is shown that for the purification of low concentrated gases with the content of organic vapors below 150 mg/m3 adsorptioncatalytic method or catalytic oxidation with ozone in the installation OKA-3000 are most effective. Main kinetic dependencies of the ozone induced oxidation of toluene and acetone over copper oxide catalyst are given and discussed. It is shown that the efficiency of this method of VOCs removal is based on low operation temperature 313-343 K, by contrast to conventional catalytic incineration by air requiring preliminary heating of the gases to 523-573 K. A special consideration is given to adsorptive damping as an efficient method for leveling the VOCs concentrations in the real industrial exhausts directed to the catalytic treatment. The use of adsorptive dampers filled with carbon allows elimination of large deviations of pollutant concentrations in the gas entering the catalyst bed, thus increasing the VOCs removal efficiency from average values. For calculations of adsorptive dampers, an equation describing the profiles of VOC concentrations in gas phase along the length of the adsorbate bed in the damper was derived

Quantum Disorder and Quantum Chaos in Andreev Billiards

We investigate the crossover from the semiclassical to the quantum description of electron energy states in a chaotic metal grain connected to a superconductor. We consider the influence of scattering off point impurities (quantum disorder) and of quantum diffraction (quantum chaos) on the electron density of states. We show that both the quantum disorder and the quantum chaos open a gap near the Fermi energy. The size of the gap is determined by the mean free time in disordered systems and by the Ehrenfest time in clean chaotic systems. Particularly, if both times become infinitely large, the density of states is gapless, and if either of these times becomes shorter than the electron escape time, the density of states is described by random matrix theory. Using the Usadel equation, we also study the density of states in a grain connected to a superconductor by a diffusive contact.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure