Patent Application
20100132320
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and process for removing pollutants from the smoke emitted from the industrial chimneys and/or from the exhaust pipes on roofs of residential buildings
2. Description of the prior Art
The reliance on oil and coal has resulted in the unwanted production of many pollutants and the pollutants from the smoke emitted from the chimneys are known to contribute significantly to atmospheric pollution and, therefore, substantial attention has been given to the control of air pollution. As people have become more environment-conscious, the elimination of pollutants has become increasingly important in order to control air pollution
Over the last several decade, several means have been attempted to alleviate the problem of air pollution by removing undesirable particular matter from gaseous processing streams and exhausts, and several techniques for cleaning up or eliminating pollutants from gases have been proposed. Among these is filtration. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,876,402 granted to Bundy, et al. on Apr. 8, 1975, 3,917,458 to Polak on Nov. 4, 1975, 4,957,519 to Chen on Sep. 18, 1990, 5,199,362 to Carter on Apr. 16, 1993, and 6,511,637 to Bundy on Jan. 28, 2003 disclose apparatus and methods used to filter pollutants from chimneys. These inventions use filter as the means to purify the air from pollutants. While the above-mentioned devices fulfill their respective particular objectives, they have not solved the continuous problem of air pollution. Other techniques proposed involve the use of cyclone separators, electrostatic precipitators, wet scrubbers, and molten gas scrubbers. Cyclones are very inefficient in separating particles of a size below five microns. Electrostatic precipitators have been rejected because of cost, size and lack of flexibility and they are inefficient. Furthermore, they are only effective for the removal of the particular matter that comprises fly ash and not for the removal of gaseous pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, sulphur and dioxide or mercury.
Wet scrubbers are useful primarily for the removal of sulphur dioxide and not for the removal of other gaseous pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, or mercury. Molten glass scrubbers have the disadvantage that the ratio of glass to collected materials is in the ten to one range which makes the process expensive.
Many techniques use one or more materials to remove another material from the gas stream. For example, to remove mercury, U.S. Pat. No. 6,962,617 dated Nov. 8, 2005 granted to Simpson used a sorbent material like hydrogen mordenite or hydrogen clinoptilolite, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,960,329 dated Nov. 1, 2005 to Sellakumar feeds the gases with a solution containing chloride-containing salt, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,878,358 dated Apr. 12, 2005 to Vosteen, et al. uses a bromine compound and U.S. Pat. No. 6,855,859 dated Feb. 15, 2005 to Nolan, et al. uses chlorine and sulfide species separately, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,790,420 dated Sep. 14, 2004 to Breen, et al. uses ammonia and optionally carbon monoxide, all to extract mercury. The question which is not addressed in any of the above-mentioned patents and many that are not mentioned here is that what happens as a result of the combination of the above materials with mercury. Most probably, the result of the combination of the above material with mercury is some vapors that spread to the atmosphere and create more pollution problems that were not anticipated.
Many others, if not the majority of techniques use water or water spray to ‘wash” the pollutants from the gas stream. Among these could be mentioned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4909161 dated Mar. 20, 1990 granted to Germain, 5,358,552 dated Oct. 25, 1994 to Seibert, et al., 6,627,166 dated Sep. 30, 2003 to Simon, 5,199,362 dated Apr. 6, 1993 to Carter and many others which use water for cleaning the pollutants from the gases. The combination of water with substances like nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide produce highly corrosive acids and need depuration in order to separate the solid residual substances carried by them, and in order to chemically modify at least the more polluting substances contained therein. To this purpose, some apparatuses such as electrostatic, liquid flow separators, filters, cyclones, gas supplied afterburners and catalytic afterburners have been proposed. However, in most cases the installation and management costs of such purifying apparatuses are unsustainable and, on the other hand, their effectiveness is not satisfactory in the general applications. Furthermore, the fumes which are discharged from the heat exchanger device are saturated with water vapor, and the harmful pollutants still present are in solution in water droplets. It is, therefore, necessary to install downstream from the heat exchanger device, another device for the removal of vesicles which capture the droplets being released from this exchanger. The vesicle-removal device, which may be a Venturi tube, uses excessive amount of energy and easily becomes clogged with soot. To do without this vesicle-removal device, different installation arrangements have been suggested, all of which are based on the reheating of the fumes before releasing them into the atmosphere in a non-saturated state. In any event, the installation of the vesicle-removal device or the reheating system is complicated, burdensome, and difficult to maintain.
As can be appreciated from the above, an urgent need exists for a new and improved air pollution prevention system that answers the immediate need of preventing air pollution resulting from the spread of gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere, and, at the same time, is cost effective, simple and practical. This improvement is the object of the present invention. The present invention overcomes the problems of the prior art mentioned above, and provides other advantages that have not been realized before. To this effect, the present invention substantially fulfills this need, and, particularly, the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concept and analysis of the prior art in terms of its simplicity, practicality, and the low cost of materials used, of installation and maintenance. Furthermore, the advantage of the present invention are that the cleaning and/or replacement of the filters and the cleaning of the fans and the entire interiors of the housing are easy and practical. By removing the door or sliding it to the side, all parts are exposed and accessible for cleaning and/or replacement. The process of the present invention eliminates the need for present reduction technologies which are extremely expensive to manufacture, install and maintain, and does not have the drawbacks mentioned above. Using the present invention makes it possible to replace the filter elements and cleaning the fans without additional equipment, and to eliminate the need for additional complex, bulky, ineffective and expensive cleaning equipments. The filter element of the present invention can be designed to fit the housing configuration, and once designed and manufactured, the filter element provides for flexibility not available with prior art. Furthermore, the filter element is designed in a desired form and mounted in the housing in a way that does not allow the escape of the smoke and the arrangement of the fans does not allow the re-entry of the smoke back to the chimney, a criticism that the prior art poses against filtration. The process of the present invention removes the pollutants from the chimneys by using filtration, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,318,853 granted to Chung, et al. dated Jan. 15, 2008, which has physical properties that permit it to have resistance to the degrading effects of humidity, heat, air flow, chemical and mechanical stress or impact, as the sole means of air cleaning and this innovation does not use chemicals to combine with other chemicals in order to remove them and does not use water to combine with the chemicals in the gas stream to produce corrosive acids. This process is simple, practical, effective, and inexpensive and makes the present invention possible to be accessible for both industrial and residential chimneys. Furthermore, the present invention is also adaptable to improvement through variations of size and shape of the housing, the numbers of the fans, and layers of filters. For example, the shape of the housing can be rectangular instead of round, and the number of fans and filter layers could increase to make the system even more efficient.
The present invention relates to a system for removing pollutants from the smoke emitted from the chimneys. The invention uses three electrical fans and two filters. The first fan draws the smoke from the chimney outlet and pushes it toward the first filter to be cleaned, the second fan draws the partially cleaned air from the first filter and pushes the partially cleaned air toward the second filter to further clean the polluted air and the third fan pushes the cleaned air to the atmosphere.
The air pollution control system of the present invention can be applied to an industrial chimney or the chimney on roof of a residential building. The process and apparatus of the present invention will be more fully understood from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying figures.
On the two plates 3 and 12 are installed parts of three locks, 2, 4, 10 on left and 13a,b,and c on right of the rear housing 11 to connect to their corresponding mates 14a, b, and c on left of the cover 37, and 17, 18, and 19 on the right of cover 37 respectively.
On bar 2 there are three holes from which the electrical cords 5a, 7a, and 9a come out to be connected to electrical power, not shown, for the operation of the three fans.
Once the fans and filter elements are installed in the manner mentioned above, the cover 37 can be connected to the rear of the housing 11 and fastened by the locks on both right and left sides. Now the whole housing comprising of the rear of the housing 11 and cover 37 can be installed on top of the chimney
Although the housing is made to fit the size of the chimney, extra tightening of the housing to the chimney is necessary to make the operation of the system quite secure at a high altitude. Therefore, the other components shown in
The components for securing the housing on the chimney comprises of four plates each with four holes in the four corners. Plate 21 embraces the rear part of the housing 11 and the chimney to connect to the front plate 29, the latter embracing the cover 37 and the chimney from the front. These two plates, 21 and 29, are connected to each other by means of two other plates 33 and 24 on left and right side of the housing. To connect the rear plate 21 to the front plate 29 on left, the two screws 35 pass through the two holes 34 of the left side plate 33 and through the two holes 36 of the rear plate 21, through the two holes 30 of front plate 29, and then through the two hole 32 of side plate 33 in front. To complete the connection on left, the two bolts 31 are tightened to the screws 35 on the holes 32 on the face of the side plate 33. The same procedure is followed for the connection of the right side of the housing. The two screws 25 pass through 23 from rear, then through 22, 28, and finally 27, and then the two bolts 26 are tightened on the face of 27.
With the fans and filter means installed, the cover 21 can be attached to the housing 12. The cover 21 covers the housing 12 only from the point above bracket 4a.
The cover 21 is, therefore, not attached to the chimney and can be removed for cleaning and/or replacement of fans and filter elements, the inside of the housing and/or of itself. Furthermore, for cleaning and/or replacement purposes, the cover 21 does not have to be removed; it can, alternatively, be opened and pushed to the side on the hinges 24, 25 and 27 provided on right side of the cover 21 and on the left side, not numbered. To attach the cover 21 to the housing 12 or remove it from the latter is very easy. To attach, the lock part on plate 20 connect to lock parts on plate 15 and the lock parts on plate 24 connect to lock part on plate 15a. There fore, 19c should mate with its fellow 13, 19b with 9 and 19a with 5 to complete the attachment on the left side. For the right side, the lock part 23 should mate with 18c, 26 with 18b and 28 with 18a.
To start the operation, the three electrical cords 6, 10, and 14 have to be connected to a power source, not shown, and turned on. The smoke containing the pollutants exits the chimney outlet 1a and is pulled by the fan 7 and is pushed upward by the same fan toward the first filtering means 8, the said filtering means 8 absorbs the pollutants in the smoke. The fan 11 pulls away the partially cleaned air to itself and pushes the said air toward the filtering means 12 which cleans the partially cleaned air further. The cleaned air is sucked by the fan 16 and is pushed by the said fan to outlet 17 of the housing to enter the atmosphere.
The cover can be attached to the housing by locks 12a, 12b and 12c on left and 14a, 14b, and 14c on right placed on plates 4 and 17 respectively. These mentioned locks mate with their corresponding part on the cover not shown. The plates 4 and 17 are connected to the body of the housing by bars 12 and 14 which allow the cover to open to the side for cleaning of the interior of the housing, cleaning and/or replacement of the fans and filter means.
As can be seen in
