Sometimes it is difficult to separate a specific chemical compound from a mixture.  When this occurs, it may be beneficial to react the compound to form an entirely new one that can be easily separated. This technique is called "reactive separation".  Reactive separations applied with Value Recovery's technology have been shown to be effective at removing cyanide from gold mine tailings streams.  The removal of phenols, acrylates and methacrylates encountered in chemical industry waste streams are other major applications.

We use proprietary  catalysis technology to target a specific chemical species and convert it into something more desirable or destroy it.  The technology employed in the examples described here is "Phase Transfer Catalysis" or PTC for short. By employing PTC, we can convert hazardous chemicals like methyl chloride, allyl bromide, phenol, acrylate, cyanide found in either air or dilute water streams  to useful chemicals or benign non-hazardouss species. Benefits of this technology are:

A.       Generation of new revenue from the creation of a saleable product out of previously  wasted byproducts.

B.      Cost avoidance from not having to incinerate organic wastes that contain halogens (chlorine, bromine, or iodine) or are highly water soluble organic anions.

The compelling technical feature of a PTC process is that it brings together reactants from separate phases that would not normally interact. The reactions have been known for years and follow well understood mechanisms. For environmental applications, the catalysts are relatively cheap and are stable enough to be recycled within the process.

Please note that our methyl bromide scrubbing systems do not use PTC.  These systems use different technology, still under the umbrella of reactive separations, and were developed as a direct result of our knowledge and experience in nucleophillic substitution reactions.

For more information on these systems, please go to www.ptcvalue.com

Quarantine and Pre-shipment

Small Chamber Fumigation

Portable Scrubber System

Soil Emissions

Anthrax Fumigation