The Industrial Waste Combustor That Tamed Toxic Aluminium Smelting Residue
Spent Pot Lining (SPL) — a by-product of aluminium smelting — represents one of the industry’s more stubborn environmental challenges. Rich in refractory, carbon, fluxes, and cyanide, the material is classified as toxic waste and demands careful handling and disposal. The story of Torftech’s solution began in 1987, when Comalco Aluminium Ltd of Australia set […]
The TORBED vs an Industrial Rotary Kiln
The TORBED reactor and the rotary kiln are both gas–solid contacting thermal processing technologies, but they operate on fundamentally different principles, and this leads to noticeably different physical scales for the same processing duty. A rotary kiln is a slowly rotating, inclined cylinder. Material is fed in at the upper end and gradually tumbles along […]
TORBED vs. Conventional Industrial Fluidized-Bed Gasifier – A Scale Perspective
Scale separates the TORBED® reactor from the conventional industrial fluidized-bed gasifier more clearly than any other dimension, but the picture is more nuanced than a simple “big versus small” framing. Conventional fluidized-bed gasifiers — bubbling and circulating — are engineered to scale up by building larger single vessels. Established licensors have engineering pathways into the […]
Choosing Between a TORBED and an Industrial Rotary Drum Dryer
The choice between a TORBED toroidal-bed dryer and a rotary drum dryer is less a matter of specifications than of matching the machine to the duty. The two technologies operate on different physical principles and are good at different things. The rotary drum is a long, slowly rotating, slightly inclined cylinder that lifts and cascades […]
Why Use a TORBED Gasifier rather than an Industrial Fluidized Bed Gasifier?
Fluidized bed and TORBED reactors are both gas–solid contacting systems used for gasification, but they differ fundamentally in how they suspend and process particles. A fluidized bed lifts an inert bed of sand or olivine vertically using upward gas flow at modest velocities of one to five metres per second, providing a familiar and well-understood […]
Why Use A TORBED Processor Instead Of A Rotary Kiln For Calcining?
1. Much faster heat transfer → shorter processing time TORBED systems use a high-velocity gas stream to suspend and circulate particles. This creates extremely efficient heat transfer, so calcination can happen in seconds to minutes, compared to hours in a rotary kiln. 2. More uniform temperature control In a rotary kiln, material tumbles slowly and […]
The TORBED as an Industrial Waste Combustor
Torbed processors have been employed treating industrial waste since 1987. On some projects these involve the TORBED in its role as an industrial Waste combustor: burning waste wood, combusting the material found at the bottom of oil tanker’s tanks, burning hydrocarbons off waste asphalt and burning the carbon and sulphur out of spent aluminium pot, […]
Circulating Fluidized Bed Combustion Technology and The Torbed Processor
One of the key features of a TORBED processor is process intensification: making the process happen in a more concentrated way. A result of this is that a TORBED processor of any given capacity is smaller in scale than a conventional circulating fluidised bed of similar capacity. This makes a TORBED processor less costly to […]
The Torbed Processor: A Modern Industrial Gasifier
We sold our first TORBED gasifier in 2006. Use of a TORBED processor as a gasifier is one of several thermal biomass processes including drying, torrefaction, gasification and combustion for which our technology is suited. We have treated at test or commercial scale sewage sludge, manure, nutshells, oil palm EFB,, virgin wood, waste wood, RDF, […]
The Torbed Processor: an Alternative to a Rotary Kiln for Calcining
In calcining applications, rotary kilns and TORBED reactors differ mainly in their operating principles, heat transfer characteristics, and processing speed. A rotary kiln is a long, slightly inclined rotating cylindrical furnace in which solid materials slowly move from the feed end to the discharge end while being heated. Heat transfer occurs mainly through convection and […]