Cooling of Pot Gas Enabling Carbon Footprint Reductions

Several technologies for pot gas cooling have been developed over the past decade to address detrimental effects such as reduced filter bag life and increased stack emissions from the Gas Treatment Centres (GTCs). In this context, the REEL range of water-cooled pot gas heat exchangers, MHEX, IHEX, and EHEX, have proven to be successful in achieving the required gas cooling while providing at the same time GTC capacity improvements. In this paper, we show that these HEX technologies also allow a significant reduction in the plant carbon footprint, either indirectly by utilization of waste heat replacing other carbon-based energy sources, or directly by reducing carbon-based electrical power consumption for the operation of the main fans. Waste heat recovered from the HEX may also enable solutions for carbon capture and storage (CCS) either as a source of energy for the CCS process or as part of the process to concentrate the pot gas with the so-called Pot Gas Recirculation (PGR) solution. Each solution will be discussed, and potential carbon reductions are estimated in the paper.