Scrubber Technology for South African Market

ERG (UK) are pleased to announce that we have entered into an agreement with Cape Town based BBR Enviro Systems as licensed distributors of the patented V-tex™ scrubber technology for South Africa. The appointment of BBR will strengthen ERG’s global reach and will allow ERG to participate in the growth of the South African air pollution control market, which is being driven by a more stringent regulatory environment.

The V-tex™ is suitable for a wide range of difficult scrubbing and stripping applications, where it delivers economic and technical advantages over conventional packed tower, tray, venturi and fluidised bed scrubbers. The V-tex™ is particularly effective in the toughest gas cleaning challenges where both particulate and gaseous contaminants are present, or when the pollutants react to form a glutinous by-product or slurry.

V-tex™ not only overcomes many of the reliability issues of traditional scrubbers but with its vortex process flow design and non-clogging opposed jet nozzle it also allows highly efficient process intensification. This is illustrated in the diagram.

The gas is introduced into the specially designed vortex chamber and follows a spiral path to the centre of the chamber. The scrubbing liquor is sprayed out from the centre of the chamber using a unique opposed jet spray nozzle which generates a fine mist of rapidly moving droplets. These droplets capture the contamination and thus clean the gas.

This technology has gained wide acceptance over the last 10 years and is used in the nuclear, petrochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical, fertilizer, food processing, metal finishing, optical fibre, and microelectronics industries. V-tex™ also provides a flexible and reliable method of cleaning fuel gas, either from gasification of wood products or from anaerobic digestion of organic waste in the sewerage treatment industry.

Commenting on the V-tex™, Steve Killick, General Manager of BBR Enviro Systems said: “I am impressed by the apparent simplicity of the V-tex™ in removing solid, condensable and gaseous pollutants from both hot and cold gas streams. The possibility of moving away from packed scrubbers, and the problems associated with them, is appealing. There is a need for a simple, versatile, compact product like V-tex™ that will allow us to address the scrubbing needs of a wide variety of small to medium industries – as well as the large”.