from factory tools to reduce facility air emissions.
These scrubbers are called
wet packed bed countercurrent scrubbers.
Exhaust air travels through these machines
to reduce omissions before the air exits the exhaust stacks.
They work like this.
The air enters the scrubber where it meets thousands
of tennis ball sized plastic packing pieces.
This packed media is an important work horse
for the scrubber.
The packing pieces are not solid balls
of plastic but instead they contain hundreds
of hallowed geometric spaces
and interconnecting plastic ribs
that greatly increase their surface area.
These packing pieces are then coated
with a constant stream of scrubbing liquid.
The packing increases the surface area just like
the Aspen Pads do in a New Mexico evaporative cooler.
The scrubbing liquid is made up of water
and a little sodium hydroxide.
The gradual addition of the sodium hydroxide
to this water allows it to more easily absorb gases
from the air and helps neutralize them inside this scrubber.
This increased surface area allows
the undesired gases in the air to be absorbed
into the water cascading down through the packing
as the air flows upward.
The air is forced to follow
a torturous path upwards through this maze
to ensure maximum treatment of the exhaust.
The air gets very humid inside the scrubber
and it may contain water droplets from
the intense spray at the top.
Before leaving the scrubber it passes through
a mist eliminator that removes these droplets
and sends them back to the scrubber
so they don't escape.
The air then passes to the exhaust fan system
and out the exhaust stack.
At the scrubber,
the circulating pump keeps a constant stream
of scrubbing liquid flowing over the packing.
Most of this water is recirculated with only
a small amount of pressure,
recycled water added every hour or so.
The amount of fresh water added depends on how much water
is lost due to evaporation or how much water
is taken from the scrubber to the drains.
We continuously monitor the acidity, water flow,
water level and other parameters at the scrubbers
to be sure that they are operating properly.
So where does the waste water go from the scrubbers?
It gets sent to our waste treatment systems
in the CUB building,
which neutralize the waste further before it gets sent
to the city of Albuquerque waste treatment plant via
the city sewer system.
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