Gas separation
SEPURAN® Noble Membranes for efficient helium recovery
Evonik's SEPURAN® Noble membrane has been especially developed for helium recovery and purification enabling highly pure helium to be efficiently produced even when inlet concentrations of helium are very low.
The thermal conductivity of Helium goes far beyond the other gases. Highly pure helium can be produced from natural gas or recovered from industrial processes.
In many applications, mixtures of Helium and e.g. air, nitrogen or argon are mostly used. By recovering the very valuable helium from these gas mixtures, very high cost savings can be realized. Recovery can take place by means of membranes. The very selective SEPURAN® Noble Membrane developed by Evonik, together with the clever membrane configuration of Evonik, combines high product gas purity with a high helium yield.
HOW DOES HELIUM RECOVERY WITH EVONIK'S SEPURAN® NOBLE MEMBRANES WORK?
Advantages of SEPURAN® Noble membranes for efficient helium recovery
- Highly selective membranes
- Multiple membrane stage configurations based on customer-specific Needs for maximum and flexible recovery rates
- Existing production process can be economically and technically optimized
Typical application fields
- Optical fibre industry
- Medical devices, MRI Technology
- Leak detection
- Lifting gas
- Balloon filling
- Welding and metal work
- Electronics industry
- Oil and gas production
- Refrigerants
NEXT GENERATION SEPURAN® NOBLE MEMBRANES FOR HELIUM MARKETS
Evonik has launched its next generation SEPURAN® Noble membranes for helium and hydrogen markets. The group's new SEPURAN® Noble membranes are available as 6-inch products and feature higher capacity and selectivity, reducing the number of membranes required by up to 70 percent!
Our new product portfolio includes:
- SEPURAN® Noble 2nd generation - High capacity and selective membrane for helium or hydrogen purification
- SEPURAN® Noble® Fast - Ultra-high capacity and medium selective membrane for helium or hydrogen purification
Helium recovery membranes for Canada
Since August 2016 Canada has also been producing helium. A unique plant has come on stream in Mankota, which extracts 99.999 percent helium fully automatically from the 250,000 cubic meters of gas produced daily. The plant was built by the Engineering Division of the Linde Group. Its distinguishing feature is that Linde has combined an established gas-separation process with Evonik’s new SEPURAN® Noble membrane technology. This hybrid process allows particularly efficient enrichment of helium in the Canadian gas source, where the helium content is well below two percent. Linde was thus able to make a persuasive case to Weil Group Resources, the owner of the gas source, and to come out ahead in global competitive bidding.
