The treatment of exhaust vapor is a rule-book necessity.
When earth-heat fluids exit an underground formation at high heat, they carry entrained stone salts, hydrogen sulfide, and acidic sulfur dioxide gas.
If vented directly into the lower air without treatment, these acidic vapors corrode copper signal lines, pit polished locomotive windows, and strip the zinc-coated zinc coating from town sheet-metal roofs.
To prevent skin-burning stone vapors from damaging Haven-Hold’s air intake angled slats, Giles Croft had implemented an in-line chemical neutralization protocol three months prior.
In the blowdown retention vault, the water passed through three large contact water tanks dosed with pine resin pitch, packed dried lavender oils, and steam-distilled eucalyptus extracts provided by Mistress Pippa’s town fermentation distillery.
The bitter-salt botanical oils stopped acidic sulfur radicals. It turned harsh rotten-egg vapors into harmless, fragrant organic sulfate aerosols.
To Giles, it was an emission-control scrubber running at ninety-eight percent fine dust smooth speed.
To the eight thousand freezing, scared hired blades trapped in the boiling mud of the eastern plain, it was an act of impossible to understand divine grace.
