Clean-Flo® mobile carbon filters supplied for 20 years.
It’s been a year of anniversaries for us here at Puragen. Back in the summer, we celebrated 10 years of spent carbon reactivation at our Immingham facility, the site later being awarded a prestigious Green Apple environmental award as well as its ISO45001 accreditation for health & safety.
2023 also represents a significant milestone for another important area of our business, namely the rental of Clean-Flo® mobile carbon filters, which began 20 years ago in 2003. We had been selling carbon filters prior to this date, but 2003 was when we designed a genuinely portable unit and began our transition into a true ‘carbon & service’ business.
Mobile carbon filters offer a number of operational and financial benefits over fixed filter installations:
- No CAPEX for the customer, only OPEX – supplied on a rental basis;
- Modular, flexible arrangement – can add or remove filters as the situation demands;
- ‘Lead & lag’ or parallel layout possible for multiple filters, to optimise treatment flow;
- Simple Plug & play operation – no on-site carbon handling;
- All-in-one transportation and adsorption unit;
- Also ideal for trialing alternative carbons, or for periods of plant maintenance when a fixed filtration system is unavailable.
The first rental filter was a 2m3 VOCSorber® unit, supplied to a chemicals manufacturing site in West Yorkshire that is still a customer to this day!
Our mobile filter rental business grew organically in the early years but really took off in 2013, when we started recycling spent carbons and were able to supply our service via our Regen-Sys® process, offering a circular solution that was pioneering in our industry.
The next major change was in 2018, when we acquired the manufacturing facility in Chesterfield, now called Puragen Icon, which gave us in-house manufacturing and engineering capability.
The previous year, 2017, we launched what was (at the time) the largest mobile carbon filter on the market, the VOCSorber 30, designed primarily for demanding landfill gas (LFG) purification applications. The fleet was further augmented a few years later with an even larger unit, the High Flow HF20V VOCSorber®, standing 8m tall, designed for major odour control and VOCs abatement projects, for example at waste handling facilities or food production sites.
In recent years, we have expanded our business model into mainland Europe, with our sister company Puragen supplying these Clean-Flo® units via multiple French service centres.
Typical gas phase purification applications for our VOCSorber® filters include: biogas & biomethane purification (to protect CHP engines and to allow the gas to be injected into the gas grid, respectively); plus general air treatment including odour abatement and the removal of VOCs. The UK Government’s recent Clean Air Strategy is likely to cause increased demand for this type of mobile activated carbon filter, particularly our High Flow (HF) variants, that can cope with flow rates up to 60,000 Nm3/h.
AquaSorber® mobile activated carbon filters are commonly used in various types of water treatment, including drinking water purification (ideal for PFAS removal), process water (eg dechlorination at breweries), groundwater remediation (COD removal), landfill leachate and municipal / industrial wastewater treatment (pesticides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, BTEX and other trace contaminants and POPs, persistent organic pollutants). They can also be used for liquid chemicals purification and in the pharmaceutical industry.
Smaller filters are delivered via standard flat-bed truck – we have access to a modern fleet of Hiab-equipped trucks to assist with delivery and removal of smaller filters, typically up to 5m3 in size. For our larger mobile filters, 20m3 and above, we make use of our own fleet of specialised tipping trailers, shown in the montage above, which collect fresh units from our service centres and deliver them safely and expertly to customer sites. Spent filters can be collected at the same time, thereby reducing freight costs and carbon footprint – the spent carbon is emptied from the filters and sent to Puragen Immingham for recycling via thermal reactivation. Our Site Services Team can assist with the installation and removal of mobile carbon filters, if required, offering a nationwide coverage.
If you would like to find out more about our range of mobile carbons filters, for both gas phase (VOCSorber®) and liquid phase (AquaSorber®) purification applications, please visit our the relevant pages on our website page and/or contact us.
