Sulzer gets into membranes with GFT buy
15 Jan 2000
Sulzer Chemtech, the German specialist in separation systems, has bought the GFT membrane systems business from Deutsche Carbone. The acquisition, the price of which was not disclosed by the companies, helps Sulzer exploit the fine chemical and drugs industries' increasingly urgent need to recycle used solvents.
GFT, which is based near Saarbrucken in Germany, designs and manufactures pervaporation systems. These use non-porous membranes to separate azeo-tropic mixtures, such as solutions of alcohols or esters in water. The systems generally consist of a series of evacuated vessels containing a membrane which has an affinity for one component of the mixture being separated, known as the permeate. The mixture is pumped into the vessels, where a solution-diffusion mechanism transports the permeate through the membrane (see process flow diagram).
The deal adds pervaporation to Sulzer's current separation technology portfolio of distillation, absorption and fractional crystallisation. As distillation combined with pervaporation is an increasingly popular option, the company believes that it will gain particular benefits from being able to engineer both technologies.
The pervaporation process uses custom-designed membranes (in the vacuum unit) to separate azeotropic mixtures of liquids
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