Influence of pollution loading and flow rate on catalytic BTEX removal with a combined Cu2O, Fe0/Zeolite bed

ABSTRACT Environmental impacts and health concerns of BTEX compounds have been pointed in many studies. The agencies responsible for health and environment have delivered standard and guideline for BTEX concentrations. Because of the extensive use in industries and the presence of these compounds in fossil fuels, their emission resources are very divers. Today's, Control of air pollution caused by these compounds is one of the air qualities controlling challenges. "Thermal catalyzed" process is one of the technologies to control this kind of air pollution and consistent with using nanoparticles as a catalyst, this process is further considered now. So, we conducted this study to survey elimination of the BTEX, form polluted air flow, by this process. In this study, removal of the BTEX from polluted air by a thermal catalyzed process in the presence of zero-valent iron and copper oxide nanoparticles was investigated and the effect of changes in pollution load and flow rate was surveyed on removal efficiency and the decomposition of the pollutants. Fe0 and Cu2O nanoparticles were coated on a bed of natural zeolite (Clinoptilolite) with a zeolite grains size of 1-2 mm. The thermal catalyst process was conducted at 350°C and different pollution loading and air flow rate. 96.18% and 78.42% of removal efficiency achieved with the retention times of 14.1s and 7.05s. Increasing the pollution load reduced removal efficiency and pollutants' mineralization. By doubling the pollution load, the removal efficiency declined as much as 14.5 %. According to the results, increasing of the flow rate has a greater effect than the pollution load on the complete decomposition. Also this process showed a good efficiency for BTEX removal under high pollution loading and flow rates