Developing a selective-separation polymer for biopharmaceuticals

Gerald Ondrey

MIP Technologies AB (Lund, Sweden; www.miptechnologies.com) has entered into a collaboration with Sanofi-aventis (Paris, France; en.sanofi-aventis.com) for the development of new molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for the analysis of pharmacologically active peptides from plasma samples. MIP Technologies will use a number of its patented molecular imprinting methods in the development of the polymers. The use of MIPs for selective recognition of peptides and proteins is a novel area that will open up the technology to numerous applications in the diagnostic, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries.

“This collaboration with Sanofi-aventis is both exciting and challenging,” said Anthony Rees, CEO at MIP Technologies. “We are looking to move into the development of peptide-selective MIPs, which represents a valuable piece of the separations market and has applications in analytical, preparative and process scale separations. Peptide-selective MIPs are particularly relevant for MIP Technologies since we hold important patents in this area. The added benefit of being able to address a large, new global market for molecularly imprinted polymers represents a significant commercial opportunity for the company.”

Sanofi-aventis will have exclusive access for use of the polymer in the analysis of proprietary peptide candidates, while MIP Technologies will retain the rights to use the polymers for other applications. The incorporation of the polymer into the Sanofi-aventis analytical methods will make use of separation cartridges, which will be provided through MIP Technologies’ exclusive partnership in analytical products with Supelco, a division of Sigma Aldrich (www.sigmaaldrich.com). MIP material developed during the collaboration may also be usable for selective peptide purification at preparative or process scale. Financial terms were not disclosed.

MIP Technologies AB is a world-leading company in the development of molecularly imprinted polymers . The company is a pioneer in the commercial applications of MIPs, holds important patents and maintains cutting-edge research activities in this area. The company’s mission is to provide innovative products based on molecularly imprinted polymers that serve industry’s needs in analytical, preparative- and process-scale selective separations. The company has the ability to produce MIPs and other selective polymers from laboratory to pilot scale and is well placed to develop large-scale separation solutions for its customers. Currently, the company develops analytical separation products (for example, SPE) and has multiple custom process scale projects in place with several blue chip companies.

Mass-production technology for making functionalized organic nanotubes

Researchers at the Nanotube Research Center of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; Tokyo; www.aist.go.jp) have developed a process for making organic nanotubes of metal complexes (photo, left). The scientists have produced organic nanotubes with metal ions (Zn⁺², Cu⁺², Co⁺², Ni⁺², Fe⁺² and Mg⁺²) complexed at the inner and outer surfaces of organic nanotubes (diagram, right), and believe such materials will find applications as: new catalysts with transient metal coordinated spatially on the inside; low-molecular-weight compounds with coordinated functional groups; DNA and protein inclusion, adsorption, and separation for biotechnology; and new electronic, magnetic and optical materials. For example, a Cu-complexed organic nanotube has been shown to selectively adsorb gold nanoparticles that have an amino group on their surface.

The new nanomaterials are made by adding aqueous solutions of metal salts to a suspension of peptide lipids in methanol or ethanol. Nanotubes form after 10 minutes, producing about 2 – 20 g/mL of suspension — a production rate about 200 times higher than alternative methods. The simple procedure consumes little energy and is easy to scale up, says AIST.

This is the third mass-production process for making organic nanotubes that has been developed by AIST. The previous processes produce organic nanotubes with hydroxyl and carboxyl groups on the surface.

Two solid ways to remove CO2 from fuelgas

If you trying to remove CO2(Carbon dioxide) from your fuel gas, maybe this article will help you.
First, based on Na2CO3

monoethanolamine (MEA) is the traditional solvent for scrubbing CO2 from fluegas, more effective methods, including solid absorbents, are being developed (see CE, December 2008, pp. 16–20). Sodium carbonate, for example, is the sorbent in a process being developed, with DOE support, by Research Triangle Institute (RTI, Research Triangle Park, N.C.; www.rti.org). Desulfurized fluegas from a wet scrubber is passed through a fluidized bed of Na2CO3 particles, which adsorb CO2 to form bicarbonate at 50–80°C. When the particles are loaded they are heated with steam or CO2 to about 120°C to drive off a 99%-pure CO2 stream and regenerate Na2CO3 (diagram).

The process "uses only about half the energy of amine processes and you don’t have to handle any corrosive liquid," says Raghubir Gupta, a senior scientist.
RTI has tested the process at a scale of about 1/3-m.t./d of CO2 and is now building a 10-m.t./d pilot unit.

And Second with adsorbing beads.

In a concept being developed by Adsorption Research, Inc. (ARI; Dublin, Ohio; www.adsorption.com), adsorbent beads are delivered to the top of an adsorber column by a bucket elevator and fall down through an adsorption section, counter to upflowing, cooled fluegas. The beads’ passage is slowed by a series of perforated trays to provide a residence time of about 1-1/2 min for carbon dioxide adsorption.

Next, the beads drop through a heat-exchanger section, where they are indirectly heated to 400 – 600°F by incoming fluegas. The heat releases the CO2, which is withdrawn through a perforated pipe. Simultaneously, the gas is cooled to about 125°F for the adsorption step.

In laboratory tests, using a zeolite or a proprietary adsorbent, the process has achieved 89% CO2 recovery, with a purity of 99%, says Kent Knaebel, president of ARI. He adds that, unlike MEA adsorption, the process requires little parasitic heat or cooling energy and the adsorbent is not degraded by SO2, NOx or O2. He estimates that a commercial unit could process 15,000 tons/d of CO2 from a 500-MW power plant for under $20/ton, compared with about $40/ton for MEA.

Using membranes to lower the cost of CO2 capture

A new membrane is combined with a novel process design to reduce energy costs in a CO2 recovery system developed by Membrane Technology and Research Inc. (MTR, Menlo Park, Calif.; www.mtrinc.com). The two-step system uses a membrane made of a hydrophilic rubbery polymer, formed into spiral-wound modules. The membrane is 10 times more permeable to CO2 than conventional membranes used for CO2, says Timothy Merkel, director of process research and development.
In the first step, CO2 is extracted from the fluegas in a conventional manner by applying a slight vacuum to the permeate side of the membrane. However, in the second stage the driving force for permeation is a sweep stream of combustion air which carries the CO2 back into the boiler. “This saves energy because no pressure difference is required to move CO2 through the membrane,” says Merkel. Another benefit is that the recycle increases the CO2 concentration in the fluegas from 13% to 19%.
Merkel estimates that a commercial system could recover CO2 for $20–30/ton, versus $40–80/ton for amine absorption. The process is expected to use 12% of an electricity plant’s energy, or 18% when compression costs for sequestration are added on. However, when a field test starts up in 2009 at Arizona Public Service’s coal-fired Cholla plant, the CO2 may be shipped to a nearby algae farm to help biofuel production.

Dust collection: Clean up your act

When it comes to dust collection in the chemical process industries (CPI), there exists a wide variety of needs. For example, folks in dyes and pigments have a different set of dust collection challenges than those in the pharmaceutical industry, who have differing requirements from processors working with paints and varnishes. However, any and all chemical processors can boost process efficiency by updating old dust collectors with new, easier-to-service models.

"Dust collection, in general, is a grudge purchase," says Lee Morgan, president of Farr APC (Jonesboro, Ark.). "Chemical processors want to buy equipment that makes their product, not dust collectors. But, they need to be reminded that when done correctly, dust collection equipment offers one of the easiest ways to increase efficiency because it is often tied to all their primary pieces of production equipment."
This means that when the dust collection system is running poorly, the equipment it’s tied to will also run poorly and, when dust collectors perform optimally, so too will the related equipment.
Simplified serviceability
One way to ensure that the dust collection system is performing well is to make sure it’s being properly maintained. Realizing this, manufacturers of dust collectors and related air-management equipment are redesigning their products for simplified serviceability. The theory is that easier maintenance often results in a better bottom line due to increased uptime and productivity and reduced labor spending.
"People hate changing filters and doing other tasks associated with maintaining dust collection equipment," notes Morgan. "Our customers were asking for ways to change the filter without using hand knobs and wing knobs and without getting into the dust collector, so we designed the Gold Series to address those issues."
Farr’s Gold Series dust collectors feature a quick-open, heavy-gauge door that provides access to a simplified cartridge change-out system, which includes a Gold Cone cartridge with Cambar action that positively seals the cartridges without using threads or knobs, and does not require entry into the collector. The door is fully reversible for access from either side and has a lock-out feature for added worker safety.
In addition to simplified serviceability, the Gold Series provides efficient dust collection. The vertical design of the filter cartridges provides more efficient pulsing of dust, and a high-entry, cross-flow inlet eliminates upward velocities associated with traditional hopper inlets. The channel baffles installed in the inlet protect the filters from incoming dust and separate the larger particles directly into the hopper, reducing the load on the filters.
Also striving to make maintenance and filter changes easier, Precision AirConvey (Newark, Del.) offers the PAC Sonic Jet Dust Collector, with a low-maintenance, safety-first design that places all serviceable components on the outside of the casing to permit inspection, part replacement and other maintenance without requiring human entry inside the unit. The dust collector includes a front-loading filter-cartridge array that enables one person to perform filter inspection and replacement from outside the unit with no tools by simply sliding the cartridge in and out like a file drawer.
Similarly, the KleenFlo Series of collectors from Flex-Kleen (Glendale Heights, Ill.) offers simplified cartridge replacement. The unit is designed so that there is external access to the cartridges, which require no tools for replacement. In addition to the easy maintenance, the KleenFlo provides excellent dust collection. During normal operation, dirty air enters the top of the collector and moves downward through the filter cartridges, leaving dust on the outer surface of the cartridge element. Clean air exits through the center of the cartridge to the plenum and leaves the unit. Pulse-jet technology, controlled by a programmable timer, releases compressed air down the cartridge to release dirt, which falls off into the hopper below for removal.
Also looking to combine enhanced filtration with reduced maintenance effort and costs, Donaldson Torit (Minneapolis, Minn.) recently introduced the PowerCore dust collector with PowerCore filter packs (CE, October, p. 16). "The PowerCore, which we believe will eventually take the place of cartridge collectors and baghouses, is half the size of current traditional baghouse collectors. The size reduction provides a lot of savings because there is less metal, lower shipping costs, lower energy consumption and very large labor savings," says Petra Meinke, senior product manager, with Donaldson Torit.
Stand-alone PowerCore dust collectors are up to 50% smaller than traditional baghouses, and bin vent models are up to 70% smaller than traditional technology. The company says testing has shown that the units filter dust better, save space, allow point-of-use filtration and offer easy maintenance.
The PowerCore media technology is integral to the downsizing of the collector. At 7 in. tall, one PowerCore filter pack replaces six traditional 8-ft long, fabric filter bags. Instead of hours or days to remove the traditional filter bags, the Powercore filter packs are removed from the clean side of the collector with one hand in minutes without tools.
"We found that 80 baghouse bags can be replaced by 12 PowerCore filter packs. To change 80 bags can take 13 hours, but the 12 PowerCore filter packs took only 24 minutes to replace," says Meinke. "This will save a lot of time and money in related labor hours for our customers in chemical processing."
And, serviceability improvements aren’t limited to dust collectors. Companies such as Cyclonaire (York, Neb.) are working to simplify maintenance on equipment such as dust reclaim systems as well. While the intent of Cyclonaire’s Collect and Convey (C&C) Reclaim System was to preserve air quality and conserve material by capturing product dust from the silo-filling operation and automatically returning it directly to source silos, the design also saves time and labor because it provides convenient servicing at ground level. "Instead of having the traditional bin on top of the silo, we run the duct to the ground and transfer the dust collected back up to the silo," explains Joe Morris, vice president of sales and marketing with Cyclonaire. "The system is also automated, so if there’s a problem, not only is it easy to pinpoint, but maintenance will be more attentive to the problem since the unit can be serviced from the ground."
Airlanco (Falls City, Neb.) is working on its filtration units. The company’s Pulse Jet Filter has no moving parts to wear out and offers a compact, modular design to simplify maintenance. The Pulse Jet Filter comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and filter bag layouts to fit multiple applications. But, the cleaning cycle is the same throughout the line: Dust-laden air or gas enters the unit through a hopper inlet where it is directed toward a deflector that slows the airflow and causes heavier particles to fall directly into the hopper. Lighter, airborne particles follow the air stream into the filter area and collect on the outside surface of the bag filters. The filtered air then flows into the clean air plenum and exits the unit. Sequential signals from a timer open valves, allowing short bursts of compressed air to reverse the airflow in each row of bags. This dislodges the surface dust from the bags so that it falls into the hopper. The angled hopper also helps funnel the dust and debris to the airlock, simplifying disposal, as well.
Filter manufacturers, like Midwesco Filter Resources (Winchester, Va.), are also working on their end to simplify maintenance. The company now offers a bottom-load baghouse element, the Seal-Tite II, which is reputed to be an easy-to-install, bottom-load filter with a proprietary installation and sealing design that provides significant labor cost savings. The new intricate retainer clamp combined with the Super-Bead sealing design makes it almost impossible to incorrectly install the element, providing a virtually leak-proof seal and reducing downtime and maintenance costs. Other benefits include operating efficiencies to 99.99%, lower element operating pressure drop, prolonged filter life due to washable filter designs and reduced product retention due to surface filtration.
Advanced automation
The addition of automated monitoring is another way of ensuring that needed maintenance occurs in an effort to keep dust collectors running smoothly, according to T.J. Winalski, product manager with FilterSense (Beverly, Mass.). "Historically, maintenance on dust collection equipment has been ignored until it becomes a major issue that affects production, so we began to supply particulate emissions monitoring and baghouse controls," he explains. "By installing reliable instrumentation, processors not only keep abreast of baghouse performance, but tend to see process efficiency improvements, as well."
This occurs, he says, because if there’s a broken bag on an unmonitored baghouse, it tends to go unnoticed. Early on, product goes out the stack and is wasted, and as the problem grows worse, it eventually necessitates a major repair. But the monitors allow customers to find very small problems inside the baghouse and perform proactive, rather than reactive, maintenance. "They can fix a small problem according to schedule, rather than being forced to shut down the whole operation when it becomes a big problem," notes Winalski. This results in less downtime and less maintenance hours because it’s easier to fix a small tear in one bag than it is to replace four broken bags."
To provide reliable instrumentation, FilterSense has introduced its Self-Validating Particulate Sensor, which offers continuous, particulate-emission monitoring and filter leak detection incorporated with automatic zero and span for self validation. Self validation, combined with induction-sensing and protected-probe technologies, is said to provide enhanced reliability and lower instrument-maintenance costs over older opacity and triboelectric technology, especially in applications such as pharmaceutical spray dryers, cement, carbon black and other chemical processes.
FilterSense’s B-PAC MICS Series of Baghouse Diagnostic Controllers integrates intelligent filter cleaning, pressure control, particulate monitoring and auxiliary sensing into a single system. The benefits here include reduced maintenance costs, energy savings and maximum product recovery.
Reaching for compliance
Equipment such as FilterSense’s instruments are also helpful in meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.) MACT, Title V and other compliance regulations.
However, one of the hottest regulatory topics in dust collection is the recent NFPA (National Fire Prevention Assn., (Quincy, Mass.; www.nfpa.org) revision to its guidelines, which now requires compliance on issues such as rupture vent designs and location of enclosures, including dust collectors that handle explosive or combustible dusts, gases and mists. NFPA-68 now places a greater emphasis on total plant safety in areas where explosions could occur. The requirements of this revision must be incorporated in all, new baghouse collectors and may have to be retrofitted into some existing baghouse collectors.
"The new NFPA guidelines for explosion venting is upon everyone’s mind these days because it became a law versus a guideline almost overnight following a recent expolsion," says Ron Krebs, president of Airlanco. "This is a big topic for discussion among dust collector manufacturers and chemical processors. Processors need to know how to meet those guidelines and be sure they are installing or updating equipment that helps them do that."
While many equipment manufacturers are already providing equipment that complies with NFPA-68, some are taking it a step further. "To help our customers comply with the new rule, we will be offering them a free evaluation of their current system to determine if they need to upgrade or modify their current installations," says Arun Govil, president of Cemtrex, Inc., parent company of Griffin Filters (Farmingdale, N.Y.). "We have made great improvements to our product line and address really important issues for our customers and their plant safety."

Estimating Thermal Conductivity of Hydrocarbons

The thermal conductivity of hydrocarbons is an essential parameter that needs to be known when designing heat transfer equipment. Presented here is a simple-to-use correlation that was developed for predicting thermal conductivities of liquid paraffin hydrocarbons, petroleum fractions and atmospheric natural hydrocarbon gases as a function of temperature and molecular weight or relative density. Results show that the proposed correlation has a very good agreement with reported data.

IntroductionThe thermal conductivity is an important property of liquids providing a measure of a materials’ ability to conduct heat. It is normally defined in terms of the quantity of heat transmitted due to a unit temperature gradient, under steady conditions, in a direction normal to a surface of unit area. Heat transfer by conduction involves transfer of energy within a material without any motion of the material as a whole.
From a process engineer’s view point, a convenient and easy-to-use approach for predicting physical properties is the use of commercial software and the appropriate equations of state. However, such an approach does not work equally well for all properties. Accurate and reliable values can be determined for some properties, such as gas-phase densities, volumes and Z-factors, whereas less accurate — but still reliable — results are predicted for liquid volumes and densities using traditional methods. However, experience has shown that that equations of state are not suitable for predicting thermal conductivities, viscosities, and surface tensions.

For many simple organic liquids, the thermal conductivities are much higher than those of low-pressure gases at the same temperature [1]. Pressure has little effect on thermal conductivities of liquids; however, the thermal conductivity will usually decrease as the temperature increases.
The reason for this behavior can be understood on the molecular level. In the gas phase, molecules are relatively free to move about and transfer momentum and energy by collisions. In the liquid phase, however, this hypothesis is not even approximately true. Because of the close proximity of molecules in the liquid phase, the intermolecular attractive forces become important, so the molecules are not free to wander around. This leads to the low values of liquid diffusion coefficients, and often a liquid is modeled as a lattice with each molecule caged by its nearest neighbors. Energy and momentum are primarily exchanged by oscillations of molecules in the shared force fields surrounding each molecule. To date, theory has not been successful in formulating useful and accurate expressions to calculate liquid thermal conductivities. Therefore, approximations must be employed for engineering applications [1].
In many instances, the reported data are not believed to be particularly reliable and the estimation errors are in the same range as the experimental uncertainty. And yet, thermal conductivity data are very important in designing heat exchangers.
Heat-transfer coefficients in these components are usually computed using correlations that require thermal conductivity data. Due to the importance of two-phase, heat-transfer processes in many applications, thermal conductivity of the saturated liquid and vapor are of greatest importance. It is also difficult, however, to measure the thermal conductivity at saturation, and thus, single-phase measurements will be extrapolated to saturation conditions. The higher thermal conductivities and larger temperature gradients cause a greater heat flux in a one-dimensional system with correspondingly larger responses to changes in gas thermal conductivity. The physical mechanism of thermal-energy conduction in liquids is qualitatively the same as in gases; however, the situation is highly more complex because the molecules are more closely spaced and molecular force fields exert a strong influence on the energy exchange in the collision process.

Article Source : http://che.com/

Chementator: Cleaning syngas at high temperatures

There are something new in Chemical Engineering News this week, that i whould to share with you. RTI International (Research Triangle Park, N.C.; www.rti.org), in partnership with Eastman Chemical Co. (Kingsport, Tenn.) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.), has developed a modular technology package that removes numerous contaminants — including sulfur, NH₃, HCN, HCl and heavy metals — from coal- and petcoke-derived syngas at elevated temperatures (400–1,000°F), while maintaining the syngas above steam-condensation temperatures. The ability to remove contaminants at elevated temperatures has advantages over conventional low-temperature, solvent-based contaminant removal. Compared with a conventional acid-gas-removal process in a 600-MWe integrated gasification, combined cycle (IGCC) plant, the RTI-Eastman process increases IGCC thermal efficiency by 3.6 points (high-heating value), reduces capital costs by 15%, and lowers the overall cost of electricity by 10%, according to independent assessments by Nexant, Inc. and DOE.

The modular package contains the following components:

• A high-temperature desulfurization process that uses a new, high-pressure, dual-loop transport reactor (diagram), and a sorbent — based on highly dispersed zinc-oxide nanostructures on a zinc-aluminate substrate — that reacts with both H₂S and COS to form zinc sulfide at temperatures between 500 and 1,000°F. The sorbent is regenerated by oxidation, producing SO₂, which can be further converted to elemental sulfur (see below) or sulfuric acid

• A direct sulfur-recovery process (DSRP) that uses a fixed bed of molybdenum-based catalyst to convert the SO₂ from the regenerator of the desulfurization unit into elemental sulfur

• High-temperature, fixed-bed processes using low-cost, disposable sorbents to remove heavy metals (Hg, As, Se and Cd) and acid gases (HCl), and regenerable adsorbents to remove NH₃ and HCN

A pilot desulfurization unit has operated for more than 3,000 h using a syngas slipstream at Eastman’s coal-gasification facility in Kingsport. Sulfur levels were reduced from 7,000–10,000 parts-per-million by volume (ppmv) to less than 5 ppmv, and the removal of the other contaminants was also successfully demonstrated. A 20–60-MW demonstration plant is being planned.

There are more information i would to include on this years.