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Our process development facilities include several laboratory and pilot systems as well as in-house monitoring equipment, all linked to computer systems to enable rapid data collection and processing.
With nearly 40 years’ experience in building plants for applications using resin technology in the food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, SepTech guarantees to be able to scale up all its process and engineering to full-scale production facility. A process once developed on laboratory scale would be subject to pilot scale studies to confirm process objectives are achievable at on-site conditions. SepTech currently has 2 pilot units in both five and six column configurations, which are provided on lease to the end customer on a monthly basis.
The five column pilot uses 25 litre glass columns with manually operated valves. The pilot is constructed as modular units and it is therefore very versatile and can be used in any configuration using 1 to 4 columns.
The six column pilot on the other hand is in the final stages of design and is fully automated with all components on it being FDA approved including all the welding and monitoring kit. This pilot can utilise between 25 to 40 litres of resin per column and would allow for 100% bed expansion during backwashing. Again built out of glass, the client would be able to clearly monitor the process both visually as well as using the SCADA provided.
The resins used on our systems are sourced from major resin manufacturers, primarily Rohm and Haas/Dow and Purolite International.
Our fluid distribution systems are designed in-house and constructed locally mainly using 316L stainless or Hastelloy depending on the material to be processed. Our instrumentation engineers could provide the necessary instrumentation and PLC required for controlling the operation of the system or we could liaise with the customer in sourcing some of it locally by providing the necessary process logics documentation required for this. Often the columns themselves, the interconnecting pipe-work and local vessels are sourced by the customer using SepTech's guidelines.
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