Tasty grilled sausages, crispy fries and Thai noodles are all welcome treats for hungry people looking for lunch or a snack. But what’s deli­cious to some is a smelly nuisance to the neigh­bors of such estab­lish­ments: the constant odor of grilling and frying in their homes. In such cases, it’s a good thing that there are compa­nies like oxytec.

“We’ve been offering air treat­ment solu­tions for various appli­ca­tions since 2004. Our equip­ment removes annoying odors from the exhaust in large compa­nies, canteens, and also private kitchens,” says managing director Anja Tous­saint. But what the market was missing until now was a class of units suit­able for small restau­rants or mobile snack bars.

“We noticed this niche and devel­oped a compact air purifi­ca­tion unit that can clean 600 cubic meters of exhaust per hour,” says Tous­saint. With the CAP 600, users can release the cleaned air outside or recycle it back into their facil­i­ties.

Four steps to clean air

The purifi­ca­tion unit is posi­tioned over the cooking area like a normal exhaust hood and uses so-called plasma tech­nology, which oxytec has worked with for years. “This tech­nology is based on phys­ical prin­ci­ples and needs no chem­i­cals at all” says Tous­saint. The exhaust is processed in four steps. Coarse impu­ri­ties such as grease parti­cles are filtered out by a mesh filter in the pre-sepa­ra­tion step.

After this initial purifi­ca­tion, an elec­tro­static filter breaks down the odor-causing mole­cules using an elec­tric field. That step is followed by a reac­tion and oxida­tion process in the low-temper­a­ture plasma, a mixture of parti­cles in which the disso­ci­ated odor-causing mole­cules are largely neutral­ized. Compounds that do not undergo any reac­tions in this phase are then captured in the fourth step by an acti­vated carbon filter (storage reactor). No one need wrinkle their nose anymore at the air that leaves the unit after­ward. The only waste prod­ucts resulting from the process are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water.

With the CAP 600, users can release the cleaned air outside or recycle it back into their facil­i­ties.

Perfectly adjusted air perfor­mance

Along with the sophis­ti­cated filtering scheme, the fan is a central compo­nent of the purifi­ca­tion unit. It has to take in air and compen­sate for the pres­sure drop over all four filter stages. But it can’t be very large; it has to fit in the space allowed for in the design. A high protec­tion class was also impor­tant to oxytec, since kitchens produce a lot of heat and mois­ture.

“We tested various fans, and in the end the EC centrifugal fan from ebm-papst was the best fit for our require­ments – and it’s also espe­cially energy-effi­cient.”

Anja Tous­saint, managing director oxytec

“We tested various fans, and in the end the EC centrifugal fan from ebm-papst was the best fit for our require­ments – and it’s also espe­cially energy-effi­cient,” says Tous­saint. That is of partic­ular benefit to small busi­nesses such as snack bars, for which energy costs are enor­mously impor­tant. But not only will the new CAP 600 help existing snack bars, it also intro­duces new oppor­tu­ni­ties. “Now loca­tions can be consid­ered where cooking wasn’t allowed before due to the resulting odors,” says Tous­saint.