Controlling Cooking Effluents with a Self-Cleaning Adsorbent

In many urban areas the emission of particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from commercial kitchens contribute significantly to a failure to achieve air quality goals. These emissions are chiefly secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) formed by condensation of fats, oils, and other organic materials vaporized during the cooking process. In some instances, these emissions can be prevented at modest cost because the cooking effluents are hot enough so that the PM2.5 and VOCs can be destroyed by catalytic oxidation. The more common situation, however, is that the effluents are not hot enough. Heating them requires burning additional fuel and this is prohibitively expensive. This project describes a new technology in which an adsorbent captures the PM2.5 and VOCs, stores them for a time, and then cleans itself by periodically oxidizing them. While the chemistry and physics of this self-cleaning adsorbent are quite different from those involved in catalytic oxidation, the hardware used is virtually identical. Thus, controlling emissions from commercial cooking by this approach will, like catalytic oxidation, enjoy modest costs. The one important practical difference between this approach and catalytic oxidation is that catalytic oxidation is not applicable in most situations, while this approach is.