Haden's adventures with Tintin's printers

Citation

(2001), "Haden's adventures with Tintin's printers", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 30 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.2001.12930eaf.001

Haden's adventures with Tintin's printers

Haden's adventures with Tintin's printers

Keywords: Haden Drysys Environmental, Organic pollutants, Pollution, Inks

Herge's legendary hero, Tintin, is famous throughout the world for his adventures, but despite having survived many decades, it seems he is still at the leading edge of technology. For Tintin, or rather Casterman Printing of Tournai, the printers who produce Belgium's much-loved comic books, is now helping to protect the environment, by calling in the UK's Birmingham-based Haden Drysys Environmental to fulfil a large contract to provide specially tailored air-pollution control.

While Tintin may be devoted to saving western civilisation as we know it, the inks used to print his adventures tended to give rise to a fairly high concentration of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, which Casterman Printing was keen to eliminate.

The solution to this dilemma was air pollution expert Haden's design, construction, installation and commissioning of a three-canister regenerative thermal oxidiser (RTO) (see Plate 1), which reportedly destroys in excess of 99.5 per cent of any VOC emissions. The industrial exhaust from the printing and drying process is now collected, and diverted through ductwork into the oxidiser, where it is subjected to extremely high temperatures which are said to destroy any potential pollutants in the air stream.

According to Haden, once treated, the exhaust stream will comprise exceptionally well-cleansed warmed air, and harmless water vapour, each of which can be safely released into the atmosphere, without posing any threat to the environment.

The oxidiser, described as featuring state-of-the-art structured monolith media providing sufficient heat to treat up to 47,500Nm³/hr of exhaust air, and twin sealed dampers to ensure that the maximum possible amount of VOC is captured and destroyed. At present the oxidiser serves three printing and drying lines, but it has been designed with the capacity to serve a fourth printing line, which Casterman may choose to add at a later date.

Plate 1 Haden Drysys Environmental installed a regenerative thermal oxidiser to provide air pollution control for Casterman, the printers of the famous Tintin comics

In order to ensure that there was still scope to add a fourth print line at Casterman's premises, the oxidiser was not installed on the valuable remaining floor space in the factory, but appropriately enough for Tintin, it was mounted on a specially constructed platform sited adventurously on the roof of the building.

Further details are available from Haden Drysys Environmental. Tel: +44 (0)121 765 4040; Fax: +44 (0)121 706 6865; E-mail: environmental@hadenmac.com