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ABSTRACTMicrowave regeneration of adsorbents facilitates the recovery of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by decoupling the bed heating from the stripping gas. This makes possible the creation of a highly-concentrated regeneration effluent from which the VOCs can be recovered by condensation at near-ambient temperatures. The economic feasibility of two novel microwave-regenerated adsorption systems was evaluated by systematically comparing the capital and operating costs of the proposed systems with 10 conventional VOC control technologies. The microwave systems were found to have similar capital and operating costs to conventional steam regeneration systems and, therefore, may present an attractive alternative for recovering water-miscible solvents. In general, the cost of the microwave subsystem is a relatively small component of the overall system costs, and the microwave power requirements are within the range of commercially available generators, even for large emission streams.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the “efficiency” of an engineering department by means of an internal audit. The audit employed a questionnaire circulated to all department members. While no quantitative measures of departmental efficiency were obtained by this technique, the qualitative results proved highly useful to the department manager. The methodology used has advantages which recommend it to other organizations.