’43 years ago I was working as a mechanical engineering consultant, designer and developer of large scale heat pumps, solar buildings both domestic and commercial, and large scale heat recovery systems for low energy buildings – all initiated in response to the first oil price shock in the 1970s. I was invited to look at the possibility of designing and supplying a heat recovery system to generate electricity from a mineral processing plant in Germany which at the time I felt was somewhat outside my experience and comfort zone. When I saw the exhaust ducts from this process glowing red hot as they spewed large quantities of waste energy to the environment, I was at first overawed, but as I thought about the way some minerals were being processed at high temperatures (1,000°C), I had no preconceived ideas about how to approach the problem.
After many hours in my garage, with formed high temperature steel, I was able to demonstrate that it was possible to undertake the same process in smaller plant operating with significant energy savings (50% or more) and absolute precision in process temperature. This solution was demonstrated to the owner of the mineral processing factory who was not convinced that my solution was viable. The accompanying picture is of this early experimental machine; a world away from a modern TORBED processor.
Such was my belief in what we had created that we carried on with our development and created what was to become the toroidal bed process reactor or TORBED – a true technology platform and a more efficient alternative to conventional equipment such as rotary kilns and industrial belt dryers. With worldwide installations across multiple industries with millions of successful operating hours behind us, we can feel proud that our persistence proved well founded!
Chris Dodson OBE DL AFIChemE FIoD’