A baby in the family!

03-Apr-19 The largest ever TORBED processor installation is a bank of T6000 units, with an internal diameter of 6 metres, for scrubbing HF from an aluminium smelter exhaust gas each TORBED unit handling ± 250,000 m³/h of gas. Working with the University of Newcastle, we have now gone to the other extreme and created a T50 TORBED processor with an internal diameter 50mm. It will be used to screen adsorbent materials for carbon capture as part of an EPSRC collaboration with Heriot Watt and Sheffield Universities.

This is the first TORBED processor not fabricated principally from metal. This “micro” processor is no more than 12cm in height. 3D printed in high temperature polymer it enables rapid screening of sorbents at temperatures over 200°C and at pressures of 3 bar. Although substantially smaller than typical industrial TORBED units, the ‘correct’ and unique swirling flow formulation of the TORBED processor is preserved at this small scale. It illustrates perfectly the Torftech technology’s qualities of low resource use, high specific throughputs, flexibility and high process efficiency.