'Green' air filtration receives major funding

A new 'green' technology company aims to provide the compressed air industry with more energy efficient ways of compressed air treatment, reducing the carbon footprint

Nano-porous Solutions, a new 'green' technology company, has been awarded a grant of almost GBP250K from the Carbon Trust Applied Research Scheme.

The funding will enable the recently established company to develop and - in the future - commercialise ground-breaking technology, which utilises a new type of regenerative adsorbent hollow fibre.

Originally developed by scientists at the University of Bath, the fibre will have its main use in compressed air treatment (CAT) systems where it has the potential to lower energy consumption by up to half that used by current technology.

It is estimated that this could translate into minimum accumulated savings of over 4million tonnes of CO2 by the year 2050'.

Neil McPherson, Business Development Director for Nano-porous Solutions , is confident that the new technology will have a major beneficial effect on the environment.

"Compressed air generation accounts for 10% of the total electricity used by UK industry.

Up to 20% of this energy is taken up by air treatment systems, which remove contaminants in compressed air - e.g water, oil and particulates - before use.

"Given that there are around 85,000 air compressors currently used in manufacturing processes today, even if only a fraction of these were to convert to the new technology, the energy savings would be enormous," he said.

Nano-porous Solutions has been set up as a new company to develop this technology and make it commercially available.

In the first instance, this will include pilot scale manufacture of the fibre to confirm that the technology is transferable, and the facilities to create products that can then be fully tested and evaluated.

After that, the company - based in Gateshead - plans to move into commercial-scale manufacturing that will make the product readily available to a world-wide market.

n-psl already has a strong grounding within the industry having been set up by Colin Billiet, former chief executive of North-East filtration giant domnick hunter Group, which became the world leader in compressed air treatment under his leadership.

The new company expects to employ up to 20 people within the next 18 months.

"The applications for the nano-porous adsorbent hollow fibres are numerous and our work is already attracting a huge amount of interest from many sectors, including the compressed air industry," said Neil McPherson.

"Key markets that will benefit from the new technology include the pharmaceutical, health care, environmental, volatile organic compounds recovery/recycle, life support, medical, and food and beverage sectors".

Garry Staunton, Technology Director at the Carbon Trust, said: "Improving the efficiency of industrial plant and processes is vital in the UK's move to a low carbon economy.

Compressed air is a significant consumer of energy in industry and so developing more efficient technology in this area can provide substantial carbon savings.

We are pleased to be supporting the innovative approach to treating compressed air being developed by n-psl".

The Technology.

Compressed air is widely used throughout manufacturing industries as a safe and reliable source of energy.

However, the quality of the compressed air delivered by the compressor is unsuitable for industrial use without treatment to improve its purity.

Treating the compressed air generally involves filtering it, to remove dust, oil and water.

One method for separating out these different components uses adsorption, a process whereby specific molecules (the adsorbate) adhere to the surface of a highly porous solid (the adsorbent) by electrostatic and molecular forces.

The adsorbent is normally made into granules or beads, which are used to form packed beds through which the adsorbate is passed and the process of adsorption can take place.

The new technology uses the same base adsorbent material but is extruded into nano-porous adsorbent hollow (tubular) fibres, which can be single or multi layered depending on the application.

It is highly porous and provides a lower resistance for the transport of the adsorbate, and a much higher surface area to volume ratio (around 3-5 times more), allowing the adsorption process to be far more effective.

The result of this is a much more efficient filter with subsequent lower energy losses.

Research shows that the adsorption performance of the multi layer hollow fibres is far better than that of an equivalent packed bed of spherical zeolite/carbon adsorbents with around one hundredth of the pressure drop - one of the main causes of energy use in air treatment systems.

This allows the adsorption units to be installed in ductwork or in limited space without the need for additional gas compression.

The unique hollow fibre structure also overcomes some of the disadvantages commonly associated with granular or spherical adsorbent materials, such as the risk of settlement, attrition, channelling, by-pass, hot-spots and the deterioration of adsorption performance due to poor heat loss from the bed and the by-pass of the gas being processed.

A further advantage of the hollow fibre is that it enables faster regeneration times, which could reduce the length of the heating/cooling cycle from several hours to a matter of minutes.

Another energy saving benefit to the new technology is that due to the compact nature of the new design, smaller compressor units are required - meaning less power is needed.

The new hollow fibre technology can be applied to the recovery and removal of many types of gases (including VOC, O2 and CO), liquids and particles and is suitable for high temperature applications and use in harsh environments.

Its unique layering structure also means that it can be configured according to the components that need separating and the specific application.

Examples of potential uses are virus filters for masks, blood oxygenators, aircraft cabin air purifiers, petrol vapour recovery systems and VOC removal from car exhausts.

' Figure based on market penetration estimation and probability of success for each product category.

EU 'Save' report published by Ademe/Fraunhofer ISI/DOC.CE.

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