Over the past decade many producers and consumers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) successfully reduced the operating costs of carbon-bed solvent-recovery plants by augmenting them with steam-recovery systems. In some industries adding steam recycling to solvent-recovery plants has cut fuel bills by thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars per month while reducing the cost of cooling water; however, steam-recovery systems traditionally required steam at 100 psig, so plants without high-pressure steam had no choice but to pay "full sticker price" for air emission compliance. Only sites already producing steam at a minimum of 100 psig—and those that readily could afford new equipment to do so—reaped the benefits of steam recovery and a fast payback of capital costs.
展开▼
