Modular Gas Separations Technology

Ultra-rapid cycle adsorption (URC) is a platform technology. The basic URC module can be refined and reconstructed to meet a vast array of purification challenges. URC modules are small, lightweight, and energy efficient. With few moving parts, they are virtually silent and vibration-free. These qualities can be exploited in many new and emerging markets. SDGroup is focusing its initial product development on two strategic areas of economic opportunity.

Oxygen enrichment for industrial uses

Miniaturization of portable medical oxygen concentrators

Additionally, URC can be used in large industrial applications where retrofits incorporating today's separations technology are economically prohibitive. For example, adding oxygen to the combustion chamber of coal-fired power plants, a process called oxycombustion, has been shown to increase fuel efficiency by up to 13% while significantly reducing the production of pollutants, including carbon dioxide, NOx, and soot. The impediment to implementing this technology is that PSA, cryogenic, and membrane oxygen generators large enough to provide the required amount of oxygen entail enormous expense in additional equipment, buildings to house it, energy to operate it, and personnel to maintain it.

URC oxygen generators eliminate these problems. URC modules incorporate only the immediately active adsorbent, not huge tanks of adsorbent waiting to be used or purged. Thus they are manytimes smaller than even membranes. The desorption process used in URC modules operates at nearly 50% optimized efficiency, thus saving the energy costs of PSA or membrane separations units. And, because they are optimized modules, they have few moving parts to wear or need maintenance. With URC, clean power generation is not only possible, it is economically and environmentally profitable as well.