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- ERG sets sights on South African market
Horsham, West Sussex, 1 April 2010. ERG 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 below.
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”.
- €1m QAFCO 5 contract awarded to ERG APC Process Engineering division
Horsham, West Sussex, 1 June 2009. ERG’s APC Process Engineering division has been awarded a €1million contract to supply two gas conditioning plants for the Qatar based QAFCO 5 fertiliser plant expansion project. This maintains the company’s unbroken record in supplying gas conditioning plants for each of the previous four QAFCO expansion phases beginning with the initial QAFCO 1 project in 1973 up to QAFCO 4 in 2005. ERG was awarded the contract by Italy based Saipem in its capacity as lead contractor to the project.
Pictured Right: The ERG supplied QAFCO 4 venturi scrubber system gas conditioning unit
QAFCO (the Qatar Fertiliser Company) operate the world’s largest ammonia and urea production site at Mesaieed City, Qatar. The QAFCO 5 project is a $3.2 billion investment and the new capacity is scheduled to come on stream in 2011.
Each of the QAFCO plants uses high pressure natural gas from offshore as the principal raw material for the ammonia and urea production. However the natural gas contains H2S which corrodes the pipework and forms scale in the gas stream. This scale, together with any entrained particulates, must be removed from the gas stream prior to downstream processing.
To accomplish this critical gas cleaning, ERG is supplying two specially designed high-pressure venturi scrubbers to remove >99.5% of particulates. The QAFCO 5 scrubbers will be constructed from 25mm thick 316L stainless steel and each system will be capable of conditioning 90,000Nm3/hr of gas.
James Scott-Bowden, Managing Director of ERG commented: “Few companies in the world have our unique experience and specialist knowledge in designing high pressure gas conditioning systems. We are delighted to have been awarded this prestigious contract and look forwarded to working with Saipem”.
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