Industrial applications

The Isotherm technology is applicable to a vast range of industrial sectors, and, for equal size, the plant, from the reactor downwards, is suitable for all applications; in case of solid material to be treated, it is fed to the plant in a slurry where the solid particles have roughly 1 mm. diameter; in this case what needs to be adapted for each specific application is the receiving and grinding line of the material before being fed into the plant; the customization is realized in collaboration with specific industrial partners.

The applications to which Itea is actually committed are those where the market has shown the greatest interest; today the applications are the following:

  • treatment of industrial waste coming from refineries, oil companies and the pharmaceutical industry was the first application of the technology; for this Itea set up the first industrial plant in Singapore, which actually treats a range of waste coming from the industrial area of Singapore;
  • treatment of chemical landfills; in the course of the last decades there has been the creation of toxic residue deposits coming from petrochemical plants and, more generically, from industry; over the years these deposits have often lost their more volatile components and are now present as deposits of polluted ground, normally very heterogeneous and of variable heating power depending on the material accumulated. Treatment with traditional technologies is difficult and costly, but these materials can be treated with the Isotherm process without any particular problems; indeed, this application was developed in collaboration with one of the world’s major oil & petrochemical players ;
  • treatment of municipal solid waste: the term MSW (municipal solid waste) covers a wide range of materials of different characteristics depending on the collection and disposal typology in the specific territory; because of its intrinsic flexibility, the Isotherm process is particularly suitable to be inserted into the collection and disposal structure of a specific territory to deal with unresolved problems: from its use as the end cycle of residues not treatable in any other way, to the direct use of non-differentiated material to substitute landfills.
  • treatment of heavy oil fractions and, more in general, of oil industry fractions; includes a series of industrial applications, developed in collaboration with one of the world’s major players.
  • Combustion of coal for “zero emission” power production.

For the first three applications, the Isotherm plant standard unit (15 Mwt) is a size suitable to meet current market demands.
Applications in the world of oil and coal require larger sizes.