Operators of industrial processes that emit VOCs have long known that thermal oxidation is the best solution to employ. The challenge, however, is minimizing fuel and operating costs while still destroying the VOCs.

Lundberg Associates' GeoTherm Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTO) and GeoCat Regenerative Catalytic Oxidizers (RCO) are a proven economical and energy-efficient family of technologies designed to meet this challenge.

The GeoTherm and GeoCat designs were developed by Geoenergy International Corporation and are now part of the Geoenergy Division of Lundberg Associates. Both GeoTherm and GeoCat units have been applied to a wide variety of industrial processes such as wood drying, coating, tire cord manufacturing, printing, chemical processing and insulation manufacturing with excellent success.

The hallmark of the GeoTherm design and GeoCat design is simplicity. Each system utilizes twin heat recovery chambers (or multiples for larger gas streams) and fast acting "poppet" valves to switch the direction of the gas stream in the heat recovery chambers. This arrangement is the simplest available. Simplicity means ease of maintenance and high reliability.

The use of the catalyst in the GeoCat design allows the system to operate at a lower temperature. This results in significant reduction in fuel costs. There is typically a two year payback on the additional cost for the catalyst. These units are designed with sufficient bed size to allow them to be converted to a standard GeoTherm RTO design in the future if desired. Advantages of both of these systems include:

• 98 to 99% destruction efficiency
• Up to 95% thermal efficiency
• Heat exchange media designed to meet the requirements of each application
• State-of-the-art controls custom designed for each application
• On-line bake-out is available