For companies in the petrochemical industry it is crucial that they maintain good relationships with local residents. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that they respond immediately to urgent problems. A Dutch company specialising in tank storage benefited from rapid intervention when Desotec tackled an odour nuisance challenge in no time.

During the storage and transhipment of petroleum products, the occurrence of odour nuisance is virtually unavoidable. A Dutch company located in the Port of Rotterdam recently received complaints from residents from a residential area located across the waterway. The company then immediately contacted Desotec to tackle the problem straight away. In fewer than 48 hours after the telephone call, we installed various mobile filters to resolve the odour nuisance.

Odorous hydrocarbon compounds can be released when storing fuel oil and other petroleum products and when loading tankers and unloading vessels. The presence of hydrogen sulphide or H₂S - a substance with an extremely low odour threshold - can also very quickly result in odour nuisance. We tackled these problems by installing various sets of our AIRCON®H activated charcoal filters in tandem. This means that one filter captures the long hydrocarbon compounds, while the impregnated activated charcoal in the other filter eliminates the unpleasant H₂S odour. The filters from our AIRCON® series are developed specifically for the purification of air and gasses. Considering the high concentration of hydrocarbon compounds, the activated charcoal filters will probably reach saturation point every month, after which these will need to be replaced.

This company had already had good experiences with our activated charcoal filters, after we had previously supplied an AIRCON®H filter that functioned as ‘guard dog’ in their existing Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer. The filter removes H₂S that, in the RTO, would otherwise result in harmful SOx emissions. From this experience, they know that our systems are perfectly suitable for this. The supplied mobile activated charcoal filters are initially a temporary, but nevertheless very efficient solution, giving our customer the time to find a permanent solution. It is likely that this will be the installation of additional RTOs, in which our activated charcoal filters will also be used as pre-filtration.

At DESOTEC’s facilities, all used carbon is analysed so the right measures can be taken for handling and removing the saturated carbon out of the mobile filters. All molecules that were adsorbed on the activated carbon at the customers’ site, are desorbed inside DESOTEC’s reactivation furnaces. These contaminants are then fully destroyed, in accordance with National and European legislation, by an incineration and neutralisation setup. The entire installation and it's emissions are under continuous on-line monitoring, which guarantees that only harmless water vapour is seen exiting the chimney.