Talk:Air stripping

Wikipedia has an article of the same name

As part of my research for writing this article, I read the WP article. This article may contain some few sentences that are similar to sentences in the WP article. However, the article was not ported from WP. Milton Beychok 02:40, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Ankur Srivastava

I emailed Ankur Srivastava (a chemical engineer) and asked him to review this article. His email reply pointed out the exit air from a stripper could be used as combustion air in fired heaters (process furnaces), if available in a large industrial plant, in order to combust the VOC contained in the exit air. That point was incorporated into the article. Milton Beychok 17:21, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments from David L Russell

I solicited comments from David via a personal email. He responded with a number of comments which I have paraphrased below:

• There are a number of applications, other than VOC removal, that should be included.
  • My response: I have now included a section discussing other applications.
• The article has too much environmental/groundwater focus.
  • My response: The article does indeed focus on the removal of VOC from wastewaters and groundwaters. However, that is exactly where most air stripping systems is used. Nonetheless, I have now added a section on other applications.
• Stripping can be done with gases other than air, such as steam and nitrogen.
  • My response: That was already included in the section entitled "Other stripping gases".
• Air stripping can be done in aeration tanks and horizontal tray-type vessels.
  • My response:That is true. However, that is explained in the introductory section (the lede) which states "There are many methods for the air stripping of volatile components from liquids, but the most common methods are the use of either a packed or trayed vertical cylindrical vessel as shown in Figure 1, and this article is devoted primarily to those two methods." It is my opinion that the other methods should be covered in other stand-alone Citizendium articles.

I very much appreciate David having contributed his comments. Milton Beychok 21:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Wim Van Wassenhove

I also solicited comments from Wim Van Wassenhove by email and he responded thus:

• On the "Design Variables": I am not convinced that trayed strippers (in general) can operate efficiently over a wider range of liquid flow rates than packed columns. I believe both types of strippers can handle this, but they need be designed to do this. For packed columns special attention will need to be given to the liquid distributors. For trayed columns, one may need to use valve trays rather than simple sieve trays for maximum turn down capability.
  • My response: I revised the "Design Variables" section to accommodate this comment.

• The last line stating that packed towers are seldom designed with cross sectional diameters above 120 cm is probably not based on recent experience. With modern packing and modern liquid distributors much larger diameters can be used.
  • My response: I revised the "Design Variables" section to accommodate this comment.

I very much appreciate Wim having contributed these comments. Milton Beychok 15:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)