 "Linde Group's helium purification facility in Mankota, Canada")
The Linde Group and the specialty chemicals company Evonik Industries have agreed to strengthen their collaboration in the area of membrane-based gas separation. This follows Evonik’s announcement last week to expand its membrane production facility held in Schorfling (Austria).
As per the agreement, Evonik's polymer-based membrane technology will be used in the gas separation and purification plants of Linde’s engineering division. With this, Linde completes its portfolio, combining all relevant gas separation processes within one company. Evonik’s Sepuran membranes enable gases such as methane, nitrogen, helium, and hydrogen to be particularly efficiently isolated in pure form from gas mixtures, thanks to more selective separation and higher productivity.
“Evonik’s high-selectivity membrane in combination with our other established gas separation technologies, such as our world-class adsorption technology, allows us an extraordinary flexibility in the development and application of new and more efficient purification processes. We are thus strengthening our position as the leading company for gas separation technologies over the entire lifecycle of a plant,” said Tobias Keller, head of the adsorption and membrane plants product line at Linde’s engineering division.
Dr Axel Kobus, head of Evonik’s fibres, membranes & specialties product line, added, “The synergies arising from the collaboration between our two companies are evident: The translation of our profund polymer and technology expertise into a powerful and wide-ranging membrane product portfolio perfectly complements Linde’s high expertise in plant engineering and gas separation. The combination offers the ideal conditions to jointly develop new markets for gas separation.”
The collaboration between Evonik and Linde has already resulted in a reference plant for helium purification in Mankota (Canada), which started up in August of this year; this first-of-its-kind helium purification facility uses a hybrid process of membrane and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) technology. The new plant processes 250,000 cubic meters of crude gas every day, producing industrial-quality helium of 99.999 percent purity.
