Some of the many projects Polow has been responsible for in the past 40 years are:
Heat recovery on different heat producing devices like boilers, combustors, driers and afterburners
Afterburner to cope with hydrocarbon emissions
(or smell) with or without heat
Carbonisation or Pyrolysis Processes
Carbonisation Furnace for the production of bio coal or biochar
Principle of sustainable char production
For the production of biochar or charcoal not only using wood as a source; we refer to our special purpose company CharcoTec BV; have a look at www.charcotec.com for further information!
Reactor Technology: Polow has been the first to concentrate on novel reactor types using toroïdal or Vortex rotation, finally evolving into her own Swirl Reactor. This technology turned out to be perfectly suited – opposite to fixed bed or fluïd bed reactors - for processing smaller particles, or even dusty materials, and offers then a highly efficient method to convert organic waste into Electricity and Heat or even drying applications. Through this reactor and its intelligent embedding in the gasification loop using state of the art high temperature equipment as described here above, energy production from “bad” (low caloric or high ash content) bio fuels or rather organic waste residues comes within reach.
Already back in 2005 Polow build a Torbed® reactor to gasify “waste” wood dust to generate heat for a drying process. In this first installation the technology of the toroïdal reactor was combined with an internal recirculation loop allowing optimal control of the process and a high turn down ratio compared to traditional fixed and fluïd bed solutions.
Waste wood however became more and more a source for higher value products and could readily be converted into a raw material suited for the chipboard industry or into an energy carrier like wood pellets. Moreover, the social awareness began to emerge away from linear economics and move more into a more holistic approach where waste is being treated as a potential raw material suited to produce new products. So people started to be more sensitive to circularity, prevention of waste, recycling of raw materials and conversion of waste into saleable products.
In that social context Polow got hold of the Vortex technology in 2010 which fitted very well into the concept of developing a technology which would be suitable for till then seldom or not used organic fuel sources like grass, reed, hay and straw, clippings, organic sludge and chicken manure for instance.
All knowledge around reactors as well as the pre-treatment of organic waste as well as the prevention of emissions allow Polow today to realize efficient and sustainable installations using these technologies.
Other applications are combustion both of syngas or organic energy carriers, like carbonised pellets f.i.