The industrial painting and coating of surfaces typically involves stages of heat treatment along with significant VOC emissions, which make the process well suited for an integrated “oven/oxidizer combination” design with multi-stage heat recovery. By utilizing heat exchangers to transfer heat, it is possible to recover and recycle most of the thermal energy that would otherwise be wasted in the process, and potentially save millions in annual operating costs.
A primary heat exchanger is used to pre-heat the process gas as it enters the air pollution control unit. These are typically in the form of regenerative and recuperative thermal oxidizers. From there, a secondary and even tertiary heat exchange system can be utilized to further recycle thermal energy. Within industrial paint and coating applications, the inclusion of multi-stage heat recovery between the ovens and oxidation process not only ensures emission compliance, but enhances thermal efficiency and overall system performance, equating to a more sustainable, even, net-zero operation.