New green air filtration project receives major funding boost
December 10th 2007 A new ‘green’ technology company that aims to provide the compressed air industry with more energy efficient ways of reducing its carbon footprint has been awarded a grant of almost £250K from the Carbon Trust’s Applied Research Scheme.
The funding will enable recently established company Nano-porous Solutions (n-psl) to develop and commercialise technology, which uses 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 industry². 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 plc, 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 & 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.”
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