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Waste Gas Treatment in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Efficient Solutions for Compliance and Sustainability

In the face of increasingly stringent environmental regulations, the pharmaceutical industry is facing major challenges in waste gas management. This paper analyzes the control difficulties of VOCs in pharmaceutical companies, introduces the waste gas treatment ideas in various production links and the core end treatment technologies such as RTO of efficient regenerative thermal oxidation system, and discusses how to realize an efficient and economical waste gas treatment scheme in combination with the latest national standards, such as "Emission Standard for Air Pollutants in Pharmaceutical Industry" (GB 37823-2019).

Pharmaceutical companies will use organic solvents with low melting point and good volatility in the production process. Such solvents will cause pollution problems when they volatilize during the production process. If there is no effective treatment, it will not only emit a strong odor in the workshop, endanger the human respiratory system, but also affect product quality and production efficiency. In this regard, the Chinese government has issued strict environmental regulations, especially for the pharmaceutical industry, which may produce a lot of harmful waste gas industry. For example, the "Pharmaceutical Industry Air Pollutant Emission Standard" (GB37823-2019) stipulates specific emission limits, and companies must follow the regulations before they can operate legally.

According to regulations, pharmaceutical companies are required to meet the air pollutant emission limits and other pollution control requirements specified in the table below.

Enterprises in key areas need to implement the special emission standards for air pollutants specified in Table 2:

Characteristics and control difficulties of VOCs emission in pharmaceutical industry:

There are a wide variety of VOCs involved in the production process of the pharmaceutical industry, including various organic solvents, reaction by-products, etc., which increases the complexity of control.
The production process of the pharmaceutical industry is complex, involving a large number of equipment and emission nodes, making the control and management of VOCs more difficult.
Due to the particularity of the production process, the emission of VOCs is often discontinuous and unstable, which brings challenges to the selection and application of control technology.
Some VOCs emitted by the pharmaceutical industry have a strong odor, which has a great impact on the environment and human health. Therefore, the emission requirements of these substances are higher, and more stringent control measures are needed.

In view of the above characteristics and difficulties, the control technology and measures of VOCs in the pharmaceutical industry mainly include:

Source reduction:Improve the production process, such as the use of solvent-free or low-solvent production process; through the replacement of raw materials, the use of low volatile or non-volatile solvents, the non-organized emissions of waste gas has organized, closed feeding and closed production, reduce the workshop exhaust emission point, from the source to reduce the production of VOCs.

Process control:The high concentration of VOCs condensation, absorption treatment, recycling. Save solvent consumption and reduce the concentration of exhaust emissions in the workshop.

End of Treatment:Pretreatment (water washing, gas-liquid separation) main treatment (RTO/RCO/CO, adsorption) post-treatment (water washing, alkali washing absorption) process treatment, in order to ensure safety, standard discharge.

Case Introduction 1

The exhaust gas of a pharmaceutical company has a large air volume, many emission points, large differences in exhaust gas concentration, complex components, and some exhaust gas contains acidic components. The customer requires that the exhaust gas solution does not affect the workshop production process. By exploring the situation of the enterprise,MEGAUNITY has formulated and implemented a set of efficient VOCs treatment solutions for it, and adopted the method of high and low concentration segmented treatment to realize stable and efficient operation of the actual air volume between 25% and 120 of the design air volume. For high-concentration VOCs waste gas, the MEGAUNITY regenerative thermal oxidation system RTO is adopted to realize temperature self-maintenance at appropriate concentration and reduce fuel consumption. For low-concentration VOCs waste gas, alkali washing + two-stage activated carbon adsorption is adopted. The proprietary double-layer design in the tower and the front-end patented product TAR BOX high-efficiency demister make the adsorption efficiency higher than the traditional 20%.

Case Introduction 1