Applications

Improvements in sorbent technology are implemented in order to satisfy our customer’s demanding needs. DAI sorbents are designed and manufactured to address your specific application requirements. Sorbent defined variables critical to a superior separation include the pore size and particle size. The ability to reproducibly modify the pore size as well as pore channeling is what takes Dynamic Adsorbents to the forefront of the separation science industry.

DAI’s unique, application targeted alumina products and ability to customize allow DAI to serve the widest range of applications in the industry. DAI’s alumina can be used for the following:

Below are just some of the applications for which specialized sorbents are manufactured by DAI.

Gas & Liquid Dehydration

Finding the best method for the adsorption and removal of water from natural gas is becoming a significant issue as North America expands the use of its available natural gas supplies. Because of advances in gas extraction there is now a sufficient reserve of natural gas to handle much of our domestic energy needs for the next 100 years if this resource is properly stored and distributed. Maximizing our natural energy supplies will greatly improve our current budget deficit and balance of trade liability. Trends in energy demand and concerns over our increasing trade imbalance have made natural gas the fastest growing source of domestic energy production. New natural gas fields from the Appalachian Basin, Green River Basin of Wyoming and the Uinta/Piceance Basin of Utah are rapidly coming on line. As these new production fields are commercially developed it is essential that the gas be transported or stored devoid of water vapor and other liquids which can corrode the transport infrastructure. A most attractive method for assuring that the liquid component is removed from natural gas is through the use of a desiccant or drying agent. In terms of cost effectiveness, the most efficient method for achieving the drying of natural gas (whether “sweet” or “sour” i.e. containing significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide or carbon dioxide) is through the use of specialized activated alumina.

Drysphere™ Product Info | How Can and Why Should Activated Alumina Be Used for Gas Dehydration?

Alkaloids

Alumina oxide is the sorbent of choice for the separation of basic compounds which includes alkaloids, amines, steroids, terpenes, aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons. While more than 100 alkaloids are currently being used medically there are more than 420,000 distinct plant species and less than 10% of them have been fully characterized. The process of purification follows the following sequence:

  • Extraction of the raw material from the plant species
  • Separation of the total alkaloids from the other extracted substances
  • Separation of the alkaloids
  • Purification of each of the individual alkaloids

For example the plant species Catharanthus Roseus contains more than 90 unique alkaloid substances. Only the highest resolution separation will allow these unique compounds to be isolated and purified. The decision on which activated alumina to use will be based on the characteristics of the plant alkaloids, such as the compound polarity, solubility, molecular size and shape.

Activated Alumina for the Purification of Natural Plant Alkaloids

Antibiotics

Antibiotics produced by the isolation of compounds produced in large scale fermentation broths demonstrate the benefits of using activated alumina for large scale industrial application. Peptide fermentation broths yielding useful antibiotics are an integral mainstay of the pharmaceutical industry. Glycopeptides such as vancomycin used for the treatment of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as well as other gram positive bacteria resistant to penicillin are produced from the genus Actinomycetes. Vancomycin remains the most important antibiotic in the treatment of MRSA. Given the increasing prevalence of MRSA in the community setting, and it’s presence in previously health individuals, the role of this drug in controlling both the spread and disease eradication is gaining global recognition.

Decolorization of crude filtered vancomycin improves the purification of vancomycin with subsequent reversed phase chromatography. The decolorization step also diminishes fouling of the reversed phase packing material, and allows an effected single reverse phase step approaching the purity level of 95% which is acceptable for use as a pharmaceutical agent. Many pharmaceutical firms traditionally use basic anion exchange resins (such as Dow Amberlite FPA98 CL) for decolorization of the crude vancomycin broth. Such basic anion exchange resins were introduced because they had proven more effective and economical than carbon or bore char based technologies for sugar solutions. However, the argument is made that activated alumina provides that ability and much more. Furthermore, due to its amphoteric character, and the ability to manipulate pore sizes, activated alumina can do so much more. The basic ion exchange resins were promoted because they offered a pore structure allowing high molecular weight organics to be easily adsorbed. These ion exchange resins were felt to exhibit good resistance to physical breakdown by attrition and osmotic shock.

There is no material which offers the endurance, the amphoteric properties, as well as the heat and pressure stability of activated alumina. By manipulating the pore size of the specialty alumina to accommodate virtually any high molecular weight organic material, it is possible to provide both decolorizing and polishing for many bio-processing applications such as natural product extraction and the recovery of antibiotics from fermentation broths. Similar application processes provides a cost effective solution for the production of other antibiotic agents. Activated alumina provides a role in both the isolation and purification of antibiotic compounds.

DynaPharma™ Pyrogen Product Info

Arsenic Cleanup

There is no known benefit to human health from arsenic. Arsenic in water is tasteless, odorless and colorless. Excess and preventable chronic disease and death led the EPA in 2006 to reduce the acceptable public water level of arsenic from 50 to 10 parts per billion. Excess exposure to arsenic increases the risk for hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and an increased risk of lung, bladder, skin liver and kidney cancers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified arsenic as a Group I human carcinogen. The previous standard of 50 parts per billion gave over a 70 year lifetime a 1 in 100 chance of developing a solid tumor just on the basis of drinking water which is the risk equivalent of being killed in a motor accident. Removing arsenic from the water supply is therefore important. Higher levels of arsenic tend to be found in ground water sources than in surface water such as lakes and rivers. Adsorption technologies provide the easiest, most efficient and most cost efficient means of removing arsenic from the water supply. Activated alumina has become the adsorption method of choice. Only DAI has developed the means to remove both asenite and arsenate compounds in a single adsorptive process.

Arsenic – Impact of Changes in EPA Enforced Environmental Legislation | Alumina and the Removal of Arsenic

Counterfeit Drugs

The ability to identify counterfeit drugs is an issue with enormous global implications. Counterfeit drugs include drugs with the correct or wrong ingredients, without active ingredients, with insufficient active ingredients or fake packaging. Counterfeit drugs may be placebo in quality, or worse they main contain materials that do harm. The World Health Organization estimates that 25% of medicines in developing countries are counterfeit with that figure reaching as high as 50% in some places. The problem with fake and suboptimal medications has been much worse with the global expansion in the use of the World Wide Web, as a significant proportion of medications sold through the Internet pharmacies are counterfeit. The counterfeit drug trade is enormous – according to the US Center for Medicine in the Public Interest the sales volume in counterfeit drugs this year will be at least $ 75 billion USD, which is a 95% increase in sales volume in the past 5 years. Almost anything connected with drug manufacturing is being counterfeited – the active ingredients, dosage forms, package inserts, packaging, manufacturer’s names, back numbers, expiration dates and documentation related to quality control.

Thin layer chromatography is the main screening method for determining if a drug product meets label specifications and is legal. TLC is employed to identify drug substances, to estimate drug substance content and to detect related substances that may be regarded as impurities by comparing the drug of evaluation with a known drug standard. This procedure is cheap, specific and sensitive. Separations can be performed on silica gel layers containing fluorescent indicator and separated spots are detected under ultraviolet lamps or with iodine detection reagent.

Dynamic Adsorbents provides the widest range of TLC plates in the industry and can assist you with your use of this technology.

TLC Plates Product Info | Methods Based on Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) Usage to Identity Counterfeit Drugs

Decolorization

The term decolorization as used in the pharmaceutical industry is a misnomer. It does not mean to literally remove color. That would be too simple, too literal. Rather, to decolorize in the pharmaceutical industry means to remove impurities of one sort or another. In the decolorization of a fermented product process stream one often uses ion exchange resins. However, a superior solution lies in the use of specially designed activated alumina. Activated alumina has the ability to effectively remove impurities. The degree of color removal can be programmed by altering pore size, pH and particle size. Materials which can be decolorized by using activated alumina are as diverse as hydrocarbon oils, food oils such as olive oil, fatty acid derived nitriles, azo and other textile dyes, poly vinyl chloride, industrial carbon and antibiotics such as daunomycin and vancomycin.

Within the textile industry decolorization is reflective of the removal of color. The textile industry utilizes more than 10,000 different dyes and pigments, with the azo class of synthetic dyes representing more than 50% of all dye production. There are more than 2,000 structurally different azo dyes in commercial use. For both environmental and health reasons it is essential to completely removed these azo dyes before they reach to effluent stream as they may become carcinogenic in oxygen depleted settings. The advantage of using activated alumina to bind and decolorize azo dyes lies in the amphoteric properties of alumina. Both acid and basic dyes are able to bind on to the same particle. This unique property of decolorizing alumina, coupled with the ability to reactivate alumina at temperatures in excess of 400 C and reuse the alumina makes this the most cost efficient method for azo dye extraction.

DynaPharma™ Pyrogen Product Info | Azo Dye Decolorization by Chemical, Physical and Biological Techniques | Utilization of Specialized Activated Alumina for Decolorization

Lead Removal

Lead exposure in the body can cause irreversible damage to the kidneys, brain, nervous system and red blood cells. Ignoring lead contaminated drinking water can eventually cause irreversible health effects and even death. Lead contamination in drinking water is usually due to plumbing corrosion in service lines, lead solder and brass fixtures. Water characteristics promoting the corrosion of water include low pH, low total dissolved solids, high water temperature and high concentrations of dissolved gases such as oxygen or carbon dioxide. Because of its acidic pH and low dissolved solid content such as calcium and magnesium soft water tends to be more corrosive than hard water. The two “point of use” technologies successful at removing lead from water are reverse osmosis and activated alumina. Activated alumina is a porous granular form of aluminum oxide possessing a large surface area and while amphoteric alumina for lead removal works best under acidic conditions, as in the range of pH 5.5 to 6.0. Smaller particles have greater surface area. Surface area as defined by particle size impacts on sorption capacity and rate of lead removal. AL 2000 activated alumina from DAI provides the simplest, most cost efficient method for the removal of lead from the water supply.

Dyna-Aqua™ Lead Product Info | Lead Removal from Water by the Use of Activated Alumina

Lipids

Pre-coated TLC plates provides as exacting a means for the purification of lipids as using HPLC. Furthermore, the use of TLC plates is much more convenient for the separation of different lipid classes from animal and plant tissues. There is no lower cost high resolution technology available for the detection of lipids. High performance TLC plates manufactured using silica gel or alumina prepared with uniform small particle size material for the stationary phase permits excellent separations with short elution times. The power of TLC technology for quantitative lipid detection is impressive. It is possible to detect as little as 25 ng of phospholipids, 25 ng of cholesterol and 50 ng of neutral lipids and fatty acids. Standard TLC plates are 20 cm tall with varying widths. We recommend use of a standard size commercially prepared TLC plate, which is 20 x 20 cm. For the analysis of complex lipids specific spray reagents are applied to detect particular functional groups: this simplicity in performance is not available using HPLC. Lipid classes are first divided into neutral lipids such as triglycerides, polar compounds such as phospholipids and cholesterol. By the use of the plates it is possible to separate complex lipid components such as the individual elements in vegetable oils, or parts of the mammalian cell membrane. When performing two dimensional TLC excellent resolution can be achieved using either aluminum or glass backed plates.

TLC Plates Product Info | Thin Layer Chromatography in the Purification of Lipids

Lithium

Lithium which will power our battery needs is the 33rd most common mineral of the earth’s crust and it is plentiful in nature as hard rock ore and as brine. Cost efficient methods are being explored for best extraction of this extraordinary mineral. Brine extraction has become the preferred method of lithium extraction.

Lithium carbonate is produced commercially from one of three sources:

  • Extraction from mineral sources such as spodumeneli>
  • Lithium containing brines – commercially available lithium brines in the United States are found in Silver Peak, Nevada and Searles Lake, California.
  • Sea water extraction

The first process used was obtaining pure lithium carbonate from spodumene, or lithium aluminum silicate ore (LiAlSi2O6). The ore is usually recovered from open pit mines, and this process was exploited commercially because of its relatively high lithium content and ease of processing. To manufacture lithium chloride of high purity the lithium carbonate is first transformed into lithium hydroxide before chlorination to give battery grade lithium chloride. This process is both time consuming and is costly in large scale application.

Lithium brine is dried in a series of solar evaporation ponds, and then removed by precipitation using soda ash, which then is transformed to lithium carbonate. Current technology transforms impure lithium carbonate into lithium hydroxide and the precipitation of calcium carbonate by treatment with soda ash. The key to obtaining high grade lithium is to use purified lithium chloride and carrying out electrolysis in the virtual absence of air and humidity to minimize lithium’s rapid reactions. Impurities must be removed, which may include sodium, calcium, magnesium, as well as carbonate, sulfate and borate. The process concentrates brines, either natural or otherwise, containing lithium and other alkali and alkaline metal halides to 2-7% of lithium content. Most of the alkali or alkaline earth compounds are removed by precipitation at a pH between 10.5 and 11.5. The pH is modified with recycled lithium hydroxide, with removal of remaining magnesium and by lithium carbonate and/or carbon dioxide which produces calcium carbonate as a precipitate.

The concentration of lithium in seawater is only 0.2 parts per million, making the extraction of lithium from seawater impractical. Rather, geothermal sources of lithium extraction are proving much more practical. The only efficient method for precipitating lithium from geothermal salts is through the use of aluminum salts. Of greatest interest is that the highest recovery of lithium occurs at a pH greater than 11. No product other than activated alumina is able to perform consistently at this high pH. In the presence of activated alumina the pure lithium salts get bound through adsorption, and are then released with greater than 99% purity.

Given the current interest in the use of lithium to power electric vehicles, the implication is that battery powered vehicles appear here to stay. There is going to be a requirement for superior methods to purify high grade lithium from geothermal and brine sources, and activated alumina by working at pH levels in excess of 11 appear to best fit the bill.

Lithium and the Implications from the Commercial Introduction of Electric Vehicles

Nutraceuticals

Nutraceuticals are referred to as phytochemicals or functional foods. They are natural bioactive chemical compounds which possess health promoting, disease preventing or medicinal properties. Because these agents have important biological properties they have fallen under the regulatory control of the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is granted the authority to promulgate current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) for dietary supplements. Specifications must be set and met for limits on contaminants such as heavy metals, solvent residues and microorganisms in finished products. Many of the nutraceutical products are of herbal origin, and their active chemical properties are based on plant alkaloids.

As part of the new FDA legislation there is an entire subpart devoted to requirements for the operation of an analytical laboratory. The laboratory facilities must be adequate to perform whatever tests and examinations are necessary to determine if specifications are met for raw materials, materials in progress and finished goods. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) is an excellent means for the qualitative identification of herbals and for purity evaluations. Given that fact that most botanical agents are plant alkaloids TLC plants coated with alumina have become the preferred screening tool of choice, as botanicals have species specific fingerprints. HPLC is an excellent tool for the quantitative analysis of marker compounds in botanical samples. Selecting a desired phytochemical is an appropriate method of establishing a quantitative analysis for a marker compound. Gas chromatography may be useful for the analysis of volatile marker compounds and residual solvents.

HPLC is the most efficient method for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of many botanical agents, allowing great sensitivity, resolution, reproducibility and speed of analysis under inert conditions. The potency of this technique has been improved by the introduction of new detectors such as diode array detectors allowing detection at several wavelengths and simultaneous identification by UV spectral analysis as well as mass and nuclear magnetic resonance detectors. The reader is referred to the Primer on Column Chromatography available from Dynamic Adsorbents for further discussion regarding the use of HPLC techniques for nutraceutical purification.

Oil Removal

The latest addition to the DAI product line, Dyna-Aqua Oil Sorb™, was created to deal with the April, 2010 oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The product is able to literally suck up oil against a concentration gradient. According to independent testing, the combination of DAI alumina and specially formulated cotton from Hobbs Bonded Fibers provides a cost-effective and efficient method for removing oil from the ocean – removing not only the oil, but toxic fumes and vapors. This novel product, by integrating the absorption capacity of cotton with the adsorption capacity of specially manufactured activated alumina allows 60% of the oil to be recovered. Both of these constituent substances are GRAS and safe for field workers to use. The product is manufactured in the USA to be environmentally safe. The cotton product is used as endorsed by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The product is 6 mm in thickness, and is available in rolls widths of 6, 9 and 12 feet.

Dyna-Aqua Oil Sorb™ Product Info

PCB Removal

Dynamic Adsorbents Inc. (DAI) has formulated a specialty adsorbent for the removal of PCBs from contaminated sites. Alumina C is a chemically and physically modified form of alumina with highly favorable properties for the collection and isolation of PCBs from the environment. During chromatography, PCB contaminated media is passed through a column packed with Alumina C. PCBs are separated from the media by the adsorption action that takes place when PCBs come into contact with the Alumina C, resulting in a PCB-free environment. The captured PCBs remain in the column with the alumina and may be disposed of using appropriate destruction technology. The use of this potent adsorbent serves as an efficient means to gather PCBs in one location, subsequently aiding destruction technologies in dechlorinating these hazardous compounds.

Using Alumina C for PCB removal is advantageous in many ways. First, the system is transportable and can be taken directly to the contaminated sites in need of clean-up. With this technique, there is no need for a physical plant to be established, eliminating high operating costs. Furthermore, there is no high energy cost involved because there are no high pressures or temperatures utilized during the process. The PCBs collected by Alumina C are gathered in one location and may be safely carried to their final disposal site. Moreover, the reagent is reusable, allowing for efficient use of all materials. Although chromatography uses batch processing rather than continuous in-line processing, this universal technique is proven to provide superior separation capabilities. Chromatography using Alumina C is a powerful separation technique incomparable to other methods.

DAI Activated Alumina Product Responds to PCB Contamination Problem in Fish Oil Supplements | PCB Removal Website

Uranium Removal

The Department of Energy Office of Oversight has identified improper disposal of hazardous and radioactive materials on and off site and the release of contaminated water into streams and drainage ditches. Radioactive waste from uranium enrichment plants are governed by two federal environmental statutes-the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, as amended. These statutes provide broad federal authority to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment and to regulate the safe management and disposal of hazardous and other solid wastes.

The cleanup of uranium enrichment sites includes the following sites:

  • Groundwater – billions of gallons of groundwater are contaminated with radioactive and hazardous materials
  • Surface water – a principal source of this contamination is rain runoff from the thousands of tons of contaminated scrap metal located at each of the enrichment sites
  • Surface soils – both on and off site soils and sediments are contaminated by water runoff, spills and buried waste
  • Legacy waste
  • DOE material storage areas
  • Burial grounds – containing barrels of chemicals with low levels of radioactivity and hazardous chemicals

Removal of radioactive containing heavy metals at uranium enrichment sites may be achieved through the usage of activated alumina. Spherules of activated alumina with defined pore sizes adsorb heavy metals from effluent discharge and provide the vehicle for binding to these radioactive materials. Clean up of this radioactive effluent is a final polishing step in the process of decontamination in order to allow the environment to once again become “safe”. Produced with DAI’s unique, patented technology, Dyna-Aqua™ Uranium results in a material with superior performance and capacities – exhibiting high selectivity in the presence of competing ions with good kinetics over a broad operating range.

Dyna-Aqua™ Uranium Product Info | Removal of Radioactive Effluent Waste from Uranium Enrichment Plants

Copper Removal

It is currently thought that one difficulty in the commercial removal of copper from solution is that the metal forms into complexes such as with benzotriazoles or other triazoles. Activated alumina oxides are able to address this issue and remove the complex by the process of adsorption with high efficiency. Adsorption is defined as the interphase transfer of material from a homogeneous or heterogeneous fluid matrix onto a solid surface.

Unlike organic pollutants, the major of which are susceptible to biological degradation, copper is not biodegradable into a nontoxic end product. It must be reduced to acceptable levels prior to being discharged into the environment in order for manufacturers to be in compliance with the Federal Clean Water Act, with the federal regulatory limit for discharged copper in suspension or solution being 1.3 mg/Liter.

Furthermore competitive commercially available technologies such as ion exchange, chemical precipitation, ultafiltration and electrochemical deposition are costly – chelating and ion exchange resins are expensive.

The ideal solution to clean up of industrial wastewater would be to find an adsorbent which could avoid the need for co-precipitation and pH adjustment. The sorption of copper is highly pH dependent with an increase in the amount of adsorption with increasing pH.

The amphoteric property of specialty activated alumina is able to do away without the need for the coprecipitant, and the compound is able to enhance copper removal as the pH of the solution increases.

Dyna-Aqua™ Copper is a specially designed activated alumina oxide which is recommended for the isolation and removal of copper found in waste water in either a suspension or solution form. It is is designed especially for the recovery of copper from spent solutions produced in printed circuit (wiring) board manufacture and electroplating

Dyna-Aqua™ Copper Product Info

Fluoride Removal

High concentrations of natural fluorides are of significance in some regions of the United States including New Mexico, West Texas, Colorado, Indiana and Illinois. Additionally, fluorides are a waste product in association with glass manufacturing, electroplating, and the production of steel and aluminum, pesticides, fertilizer and semiconductor manufacturing. The maximum contaminant level for fluoride established by the Environmental Protection Agency is established at 4 parts per million, with a secondary standard set at 2 parts per million. Removal of fluoride from municipal and industrial waste water may be obtained by precipitation, as well as membrane and adsorption processes. The best way, bar none, to reduce the concentration of fluoride to 1 part per million or less is through adsorption onto specially designed wide pore size activated alumina.

DAI provides pretreated activated alumina (Dyna-Aqua™ Fluoride)designed to address commercial and industrial needs reducing the concentration of fluoride in wastewater effluent and municipal water systems to less than 1 ppm. This specially designed wide pore activated alumina is cost competitive with any other form of purification and provides simplicity of design and ease of utility. This novel product is an exciting addition to the expanding line of custom designed activated alumina compounds offered to purify municipal and industrial wastewaters.

A key advantage in using activated alumina for fluoride removal is that fluoride extraction is in part dependent upon the pH of waste water contents. Because of its unique amphoteric properties activated alumina works optimally in a pH range of 5.5 to 8.5. If the effluent stream is extremely alkylotic the source waste water may need to be pretreated in order to reach a pH range of 5.5 to 6.5 to achieve peak fluoride removal efficiency. Furthermore there is no simpler means to remove fluoride than through the use of a column of adsorbent material containing specialized activated alumina. Flow rate efficiency is affected by particle size. The smaller the particle size, the higher the flow rate that can be used. This must be balanced against the higher pressure drop which results from smaller size material. Competitive adsorption may occur in the setting of high concentrations of bicarbonate ions. For this reason Dyna-Aqua™ Fluoride is of such high efficiency that even with competitive binding with bicarbonate ions the total effluent concentration of fluoride will remain less than 1%.

Dyna-Aqua™ Fluoride Product Info | A Re-Examination of the Role of Fluoride in Municipal Water Supplies

Pyrogen Removal

Endotoxins are lipopolysaccharides (LPS) located on the cell wall (cell membranes) of gram negative bacteria. The presence of even small amounts of endotoxin in recombinant protein preparations when injected into patients may cause systemic inflammatory reactions running the spectrum from tissue injury, to endotoxin shock and death.

Pharmaceutical products produced using bacteria as cellular factories are virtually always contaminated with LPS and all measurable endotoxin must be removed during the production process. The maximum acceptable level of endotoxin for intravenous applications is set at 5 endotoxin units (EU) per kg of body weight per hour.

Specially activated alumina with surface modified chemical moieties has proven to provide a superior tool for the purification of endotoxins due to its amphoteric property. No other commercially available agent can provide such a rewarding pH response or offer a better or cost effective method for the removal of chemical pyrogens from a protein or peptide solution.

It is clear that endotoxins develop especially strong binding to adsorbents carrying positively charged functional groups. Electrostatic interactions play an important role during endotoxin adsorption. Proteins are also amphoteric. Since proteins are amphoteric molecules, electrostatic interactions are not as strong as for the mainly negatively charged endotoxin. Owing to the globular structure of proteins, charged and hydrophobic groups are fixed and cannot be twisted towards functional groups or surface structures of the adsorbents. Additional benefits provided through the use of activated alumina include low cost, limited safety issues, extremely well defined chemical characteristics and minimal impact on the bioactivity of protein when placed into a standard manufacturing process.

The removal of pyrogens using specially designed activated alumina can be performed using either column chromatography or batch treatment. When using column chromatography the final product is achieved by filling a column with the alumina modified to enhance pyrogen adsorbance, prewashing the packed column with a suitable buffer and then passing the pyrogen containing solution through the column. In the method of batch treatment the final product freed of pathogens can be obtained by stirring the pyrogen adsorbent in a pyrogen containing solution of the desired compound and then removing the adsorbent.

DynaPharma™ Pyrogen using either column chromatography or batch processing procedures has proven to be a superior tool for the isolation and removal of chemical pyrogens. The surface of activated alumina may be modified to help enhance pyrogen removal.

DynaPharma™ Pyrogen Product Info | Chemical Pyrogen Removal Through the use of Activated Alumina

Transformer Oil Cleanup

Electrical transformers work to convert the high voltage energy generated at power plants and transform this energy to usable lower voltage energy, which runs consumer and business power needs. These transformers are an integral portion of the power grid, which by definition consists of the power generation and transmission lines which seamlessly provide a continuous supply of reliable, consistent energy regardless of end user power requirements.

Transformers contain paper-oil insulation systems designed to prevent overheating. Over time, water may accumulate in transformers due to leaks in gaskets and welds, improper sealing, poor maintenance, inadequate drying at time of production, and natural aging of insulation materials inside the transformer. Accumulated moisture and other byproducts of insulation degradation lead to decreased efficiency in energy transmission and eventually dielectric breakdown, resulting in power outages. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, power outages and other interruptions in the electricity distribution system cost the U.S. economy at least $150 billion annually; an annual cost of about $500 for each man, woman, and child.

Moisture in transformer oil is one of the most common causes of breakdown. Moisture advances insulation degradation and causes decreased dielectric strength and increased mechanical stress on equipment. It leaves transformers vulnerable to corrosion, oxidation, fractures, restricted oil flow, increased heat and aeration, among other harmful side effects. Simply, transformer life is measured by the health of its insulation system. For every doubling in moisture content, transformer life is reduced by half. Water content in transformer oil must be kept to a level of 10ppm or less.

Regular maintenance of water content in transformer oil is essential. To keep moisture out, transformers may include conservator or inert gas systems and online oil filtration systems. Oven drying or vacuuming the system also removes moisture, but requires excessive time, labor, and money. Laboratory tests prove the best way to restore and maintain transformer oil properties is a combination of adsorbents, desiccants, and hollow fiber membranes (HFM). DAI’s DrySphere™ removes water in transformer oil to less than 10ppm, more than doubling transformer life and providing greatly improved energy transmission to the power grid.

Drysphere™ Product Info | Electrical Paper-Oil Transformers and the Requirement for High Quality Adsorbing Desiccants to Prolong Transformer Life

DAI to Expand Role in the Forefront of Separation and Environmental Cleanup Technology

DAI’s role over the coming years is to remain in the forefront of separation and environmental cleanup technology by creating exciting new alumina and other products and solutions that most effectively deal with problems and issues impacting upon transportation, energy and public safety needs. Our goals are clearly focused. Stay tuned to this website for exciting news about product launches. We promise to demonstrate DAI’s role in working with government agencies, cutting edge scientific laboratories and companies to more effectively deal with many of the longstanding and growing problems facing our country as we help develop a cleaner and safer environment and better protect the public.

Application Technical Specs