The production of oil free air from a lubricated compressor generally involves the use of expensive multistage coalescing filters and activated carbon filters. High pressure drops result in wasted power and short maintenance life cycles for the elements. Operational reliability can only be guaranteed if conservative safety buffers are built into the system. The result is unnecessarily high costs, as the filter element capacity is not utilised to the full. Waste condensates and used filter elements generated by filtration and refrigeration drying also form a contaminated waste hazard.
The EcoTec process solves these problems by using a catalytic process to remove oil from both compressed air and oil-water condensate. Oil and other hydrocarbons are catalytically cracked and then oxidised in several stages using a physical chemical process. The end products are pure water and carbon dioxide. The condensate contains less than 2 mg/l hydrocarbons and can be directly returned to the natural water cycle without posing a threat to the environment, thereby avoiding expensive disposal costs. The air has less than 0,01 mg/m³ of oil.
The system takes only about 30% of the space needed for a comparable activated charcoal filter and the service lifetime is over 10 000 hours. It has absolute operating reliability as, unlike traditional filter elements, the efficiency rating of the filter is independent of factors such as initial oil concentration, plant operating temperature and relative humidity. All these attributes result in an extremely reliable and economical system which reduces operational costs, eliminates disposal problems and protects the downstream environment.
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