Coors, Pall to Develop Membranes for 'Cleanest Water Ever'
Coors Ceramics Co. (Golden, Colo.) and Pall, Inc. (East Hills, N.Y.) have formed PCC Enterprises, LLC, a 50/50 joint venture, which will license 50-year-old US Department of Energy (DOE) technology to make next-generation membrane tube filters. According to Pall spokesman John Adamovich, the inorganic membranes will produce the "cleanest water ever" for use in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor processes, as well as products for chemical, petrochemical, water, and environmental industries.
The new membranes, which will begin hitting the market by late 1998, are based on DOE technology used to separate uranium isotopes for weapons and nuclear power. Coors and Pall have thus far entered into seven CRADAs (Cooperative Research and Development Agreements) with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, TN) on applying the inorganic membrane technology to key membrane filtration markets. The formation of PCC Enterprises affirms the two companies' interest in pursuing high-end filtration markets.
Patents on the membranes have run out long ago, but Pall and Coors believe there's enough substance remaining on which to stake a multimillion dollar development effort. Speaking to a group of New York securities analysts on March 3, Pall CEO Eric Krasnoff described the Oak Ridge membranes as a "brilliant development" and outlined PCC's plans to commercialize the membranes by application and market.
The first application will be porous metal filtration tubes, described as at least a $1 billion market. Krasnoff expects products from this program to reach commercialization by late 1998. Vapor gap reverse osmosis membranes for ultra-pure water, a $250 million market, should be ready for sale by late 1999. In all, markets covered by the seven CRADAs, which PCC will pursue, total $2.6 billion per year.
Krasnoff told analysts that DOE's membrane technology was used to make "millions of linear feet of small diameter, extremely uniform organic membrane tubes. The membranes were designed to separate two isotopes of uranium and allow collection of more than one isotope. We will apply the same technology to make low-cost tubular products in the nanofilter to microfilter range." PCC will manufacture membrane tubes and integrate the tubes into products and systems.
The CRADAs
Coors Ceramics and Pall decided to license the Oak
Ridge technology based on satisfactory results
from seven DOE CRADAs signed over the past three
years. The topics of these cooperative agreements,
summaries of which appear below, parallel the
markets and applications targeted by the
Coors-Pall joint venture, PCC Enterprises:
- Economical manufacturing techniques for porous
stainless steel filters. Tubes were manufactured
at Oak Ridge, then assembled into filter modules
and evaluated in field tests by Pall.
Inorganic membranes used in a photocatalytic reactor using titania and ultraviolet light. Application: destroying hydrocarbons in water for ultrapure water production.
High efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter panels for cleaning hazardous and radioactive particles from air streams and other off-gases. Commercial filters use fiberglass paper as the filter medium, which cannot be re-cleaned. Metal filter tubes should be re-usable.
Inorganic (probably ceramic) reverse osmosis membranes for ultra-pure water. Benefit: overcoming microbial growth in commonly used organic reverse osmosis membranes.
Inorganic membranes for separating hydrogen from catalytic dehydrogenation processes used to make olefins.
Inorganic membranes and photocatalysts to remediate water containing volatile organic compounds.
Hydrogen recovery from petroleum refinery gases using inorganic membranes. Goal: to increase hydrogen and fuel contents of purge gases.
By Angelo DePalma