Technoforce recently opened a pilot plant at the Chemelot Campus in Sittard-Geleen. Technoforce Solutions is an Indian manufacturer of physical separation equipment for various industries and products, such as pharmaceutical products, food, oils and fats, polymers, agro-, petro- and biochemicals. “In our pilot plant we can determine what separation technique and installation are the best solution for our industrial customers,” says ir. Ben Bovendeerd, Technoforce’s Technology & Business Director.
The right choice
Technoforce employs a range of physical separation techniques, including distillation, drying, stripping, crystallization and extraction. Substances can be separated on the basis of their physical properties, for instance differences in boiling point, density, state of aggregation and solubility.
Bovendeerd: “In virtually all production processes things need to be separated at a given moment. This may be the final product, a residue or a solvent that’s being recycled. Typically, the separation technique will be different per production process. On an industrial scale it is often not immediately clear which separation technique is the most suitable one for a particular plant or installation. We have therefore set up six different test units in our pilot plant at the Chemelot Campus, with which we can determine the most suitable technology and the optimal process conditions. The test results are then used to design and manufacture industrial scale separation equipment.”
In the six test units extreme process values can be applied, including temperatures from minus 20 to plus 300 degrees Celsius and a very deep vacuum down to 0.001 millibar.
Technoforce gets the best out of it
Physical separation processes are applied in practically all industrial production processes, for instance for purification of process streams (such as proteins or Omega 3 fatty acids), recycling of waste streams, waste water processing, solvent recycling and for example concentration of fruit juices. Bovendeerd explains: “Frying fat is also processed by means of separation techniques. When the right combination of product feed, pressure and temperature is selected, usable components can be separated that are suitable for use as biofuel or lubricating oil.”
