1. Vorsana Scrubber: Capturing Particulates, Mercury and CO2
Tao Xing, PhD, PE, Assistant Prof. Dept. of Mech. Engineering, University of Idaho
Industrial Partner: Vorsana, Inc. (David McCutchen CEO)
Sponsor: Vorsana Inc.

2. Introduction
The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in flue gas include carcinogens, soot is harmful, and others such as mercury, sulfur dioxide and CO2 are a concern:
Health hazard for workers
Financial risk for owners
Expensive inadequate controls
Increase environmental risk
Wedding pose in Beijing

3. Urgent Needs!
Current scrubbers are unreliable/ineffective for capturing VOCs, CO2 and fine particulates
This was confirmed by manufacturers and users
Emissions are already the cause of significant cost and fines
Current technology has high cost and energy and/or water usage.
Gas Scrubbers are a $6.5B market worldwide in 2013 (McIlvane Co.)
A better way to separate the components of flue gas needs to be found that can capture fine particulates and polluting gases such as CO2 and SOx.

4. Project Goals and Approach
Goal: demonstrate that mechanical separation of the components of a gas is possible, and can be applied to an industrial scale.
Approach: the interesting fact is that all pollutants are heavier than fresh air, so a mechanism for separate that emphasizes this difference could pull the pollutants out mechanically, with less energy use and cost.
Computational/theoretical analysis using computers and experimental measurements (testing will be done at the steam plant on campus)
Faculty: Dr. Tao Xing from ME
ME Shop Technician
One senior design team with 2 ME and 2 BE students.
Budget: $70,000 (total cost for a senior design team plus a research project starting Jan. 2016).

5. The Innovative Scrubber (Vorsana Inc.)
Typical scrubbers are special-purpose. Wet scrubbers have chemical sprays, dry scrubbers have adsorber catalysts or cartridges.
Large scrubber installations are part of many industrial plants
The Vorsana Scrubber could be smaller and more broadly effective
Lower cost of installation, broader effectiveness against VOCs, other chemical emissions, and even CO2 capture
The proposed design is inexpensive and durable
Computer simulations will be used to confirm the expected effectiveness
The test machine will be made to handle the industrial scale of the test facility.

6. Tasks
Deeper understanding of properties for various components in flue gas
Design effective ways to measure concentrations of the various components
Measurements of the performance of a prototype machine shipped by Vorsana Inc.
Propose new designs
Test new designs on a model
scale and/or prototype
machine if applicable

7. Milestones Achieved
Previous Direct Numerical Simulations have confirmed the existence of radial counterflow vortex network between two counter-rotating disks (Xing, T., Journal of Hydrodynamics, 2014)

8. Questions?