Applications

Purification challenges
we test for.

Independent performance evaluation across the contaminants and unit operations that keep your process on-spec. Each application below outlines the challenge and the services we offer.

Application

Mercury

Protecting aluminium exchangers, downstream catalysts, and product streams from trace mercury.

Typical target: ppbv levels
Industries: NG treatment, refining, petrochemicals

The challenge

Trace mercury in natural gas, condensate and refinery feeds attacks aluminium heat exchangers, poisons downstream catalysts, and contaminates product streams. Mercury removal units protect both equipment and product — but only if the adsorbent performs as specified under real feed conditions.

Undetected mercury can write off an aluminium cold box in months — and the slip is rarely visible until it's too late.

Application

Sulfur

Guard beds and desulfurisation units evaluated under representative feed and operating conditions.

Typical target: <1 ppmv S
Industries: NG treatment, refining, petrochemicals

The challenge

Sulfur species — H₂S, COS, mercaptans, thiophenes — deactivate downstream catalysts, corrode infrastructure, and force product downgrades. Guard beds and desulfurisation units handle the load, but performance varies sharply with feed composition and operating conditions.

A few ppm of slipping sulfur is enough to poison a downstream catalyst worth many times more than the guard bed it was meant to protect.

Application

Chloride

Adsorbent ranking, green oil diagnostics, and lifetime prediction for chloride guard beds.

Typical target: <0.5 ppmv Cl
Industries: refining, petrochemicals, olefins

The challenge

Organic and inorganic chlorides slip past upstream treatment and poison reforming, isomerisation, and hydroprocessing catalysts. In olefin-rich streams, chloride–olefin interactions form green oil — a slow, hard-to-diagnose failure mode that ages guard beds prematurely.

Faulty chloride management in reformer or isomerisation units can generate corrosion and contamination issues — and once green oil starts forming, the cause is rarely obvious from the outside.

Application

Arsenic | Phosphorus

Trace-level removal of catalyst poisons in natural gas and olefin streams.

Typical target: <10 ppbv As/P
Industries: NG treatment, petrochemicals, hydrogen

The challenge

Trace AsH₃ and PH₃ in natural gas and olefin streams poison downstream catalysts at very low concentrations and are difficult to detect with standard analytics. Selective guard beds remove them, but performance under representative trace conditions is rarely documented.

Arsine and phosphine poison catalysts at concentrations most standard analytical methods can't even detect — so the failure mode is invisible until the downstream unit gives out.

Application

Water

Molecular sieve and silica gel performance from fresh delivery through full hydrothermal aging.

Typical target: <1 ppmv H₂O
Industries: NG treatment, cryogenic, petrochemicals

The challenge

Water in process streams forms hydrates, accelerates corrosion, and compromises downstream operations from cryogenic separation to catalytic conversion. Molecular sieves and silica gels deliver the dryness specification — until contaminants, co-adsorbates, or hydrothermal aging erode capacity.

A water breakthrough into a cryogenic unit doesn't just hurt purity — it can ice a cold box and force an unplanned shutdown.

Application

Oxygen

Pd-based deoxo catalyst evaluation for hydrogen and inert gas duty.

Typical target: <1 ppmv O₂
Industries: green hydrogen, inert gas, petrochemicals

The challenge

Residual oxygen in hydrogen and inert gas streams creates safety risks, accelerates catalyst deactivation, and disrupts downstream chemistry. Pd-based deoxo catalysts handle the removal — performance depends strongly on temperature, contaminant load, and aging history.

Residual O₂ in a hydrogen stream is both a safety hazard and a slow killer of downstream catalysts — and most published deoxo data isn't representative of real cycling.

Application

Carbon dioxide

Head-to-head technology selection across solid sorbents, membranes, and absorbents.

Range: ppm to vol%
Industries: NG treatment, biogas, hydrogen, post-combustion

The challenge

CO₂ separation duties span natural gas treatment, hydrogen purification, biogas upgrading, and post-combustion capture. Each duty has its own optimal technology — solid sorbents, amines, membranes — and head-to-head evaluation under client conditions is rarely available off the shelf.

The right CO₂ technology depends on partial pressure, water content, and end purity — and the trade-offs between sorbents, amines, and membranes only become clear when they are measured side by side under the actual process conditions.

Across technologies

There is more than one way to tackle these challenges.

Adsorbents are often the right answer — but for several of these duties, membranes or catalysts, are possible alternatives. When the choice is real, we compare candidates head-to-head rather than default to one family.