Launch of new Hybrid Microwave TORBED platform technology

29-Aug-18 With regulators and markets increasingly demanding the decarbonisation of high-emitting industrial sectors, we are on the verge of a low-carbon industrial revolution. However, to get over the line the products and services supplied to these sectors need to transform. To embrace this rapid shift towards precise, electrically fuelled novel solid processing, Torftech, University of Nottingham (‘UoN’ - Microwave Process Engineering Research Group) and Teledyne e2v (supplier of large scale industrial microwave generators) have agreed to develop and launch a new Hybrid Microwave TORBED ('HMT') technology platform. In total, some £1m has been committed to demonstrate this world leading technology at a significant scale.

This demonstration facility will be capable of producing commercial quantities of a range of products such as:

• Food - pasteurisation, cooking, blanching, drying, roasting, toasting, puffing, expansion and baking.  This follows on from the successful pilot trials already completed with the HMT.
• Minerals - bloating, exfoliating, expanding, roasting, drying, calcining, thermal shattering and carbon removal.
• Catalysts/zeolites - impregnation, regeneration, recovery, calcination.
• Carbon activation - biomass and coal devolatilisation and activation, impregnation.
• Waste streams - pasteurisation, devolatilisation.

In all cases, the ability to process materials in very short retention times and with absolute precision enables the much lower energy consumption that is necessary for renewable energy sources.