Pervatech, the cutting-edge membrane producer for pervaporation and vapour permeation, and Philips Ceramics, Philips’ global competence center for technical ceramics, announce their partnership by combining the superior ceramic substrates and knowledge from Philips Ceramics with the Pervatech membrane coating technology.
As leading companies in ceramic membrane separations and ceramics, Pervatech and Philips are uniquely positioned to offer membranes to the industry for in-situ dehydration of condensation reactions, enabling yield improvement and efficiency of the process.
Pervatech managing director Frans Velterop said: "Studies have shown that it is really challenging to dehydrate in-situ condensation reaction mixtures.
"The industry needs robust membranes, which can withstand the aggressive environment as found in chemical reactions and at the same time perform their duty, which is in condensation reactions the removal of water. Working together with Philips will enable an integrated and longer-term view across the market to address the requirements for dehydration of acidic mixtures, like condensation reaction mixtures. We also provide solutions for the direct dehydration of organic acids such as acidic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid and other organic acids."
Philips Ceramics new business creation manager Peer Gijsen said: "Recently, we have developed a modular system of ceramic carriers that replaces and improves the multi-channel systems industrially available in the market today.
"The modular system has an increased flux efficiency, which ensures a high flux over a wide range of pore sizes. The superior surface quality of the ceramic carrier enables production of selective top layers, approaching intrinsic properties of the membrane by the absence of macro-defects. The characteristic and high-quality of the ceramic carriers from Philips enables also to reduce the number of coating steps, which is a prerequisite for diminishing production costs."
The company has learned from its customers that at least three demands need to be fulfilled, namely:
- Technological feasibility: level of dehydration with sufficient throughput. This relates to performance of the intrinsic properties of the membrane system. Pervatech can tailor the performance of the selective top layer to a certain extend
- Commercial feasibility: cost per unit of product. By introducing the high-quality Philips substrates, Pervatech can substantially reduce the production costs, because no repair of the raw substrates is required and several coating steps are eliminated
- Guarantee for stable performance. To ensure stability in business and technical performance Pervatech has teamed up with Philips Ceramics and ECN. Successful industrial references are required and will pave the road ahead, which will be realised within the triangle of co-operation
