Separex brings aerogels manufacturing breakthrough to EU’s BIO workshop

Champigneulles, France: – Specialist contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) Separex will be sharing insights into its pioneering work on aerogels as an advanced new material at an upcoming EU innovation conference.

Separex is one of a select handful of highly innovative companies showcasing advanced solutions at the European Commission’s Business Innovation Observatory (BIO) Conference on ‘Disrupting the Future’. Focusing on disruptive technologies, the two-day conference takes place at the EGG Conference and Meeting Center in Brussels on January 25th and 26th.

Aerogel breakthrough

Led by Managing Director Dr. Audrey Ngomsik-Fanselow and Communication and Marketing Representative David Boissy, the Separex Team will present at the Conference on Day One, showing how application of its supercritical fluids (SCF) technology has helped to transform the polymerization of aerogels, making possible more standardized products.

Separex will also have a display stand at the BIO Show Fair, where it will showcase some of its own aerogel products.

“We have been able to formulate our own patented aerogel formulations with support from France’s Investment Commissioner for Innovation and Economic Mobilization of Lorraine (CIIME) in bringing these to new markets,” said Dr. Ngomsik-Fanselow.

“In addition, we are able to provide supercritical drying as a service to other aerogel manufacturers looking to improve the quality of their products,” she added.

SCF drying

Separex SCF drying technology can revolutionize the cost effectiveness of aerogels, light and highly porous solids created by rapidly evaporating the liquid in a solgel mixture and replacing the liquid with air. The resulting materials combine low density with low thermal conductivity, making them highly useful in chemical adsorption, as lightweight composite materials, in chemical catalysis and in insulation, and a myriad of other applications including electronic capacitors, paints, cosmetic thickening agents, and cleaning chemical spills.

Separex has developed its own proprietary method for “supercritically” drying aerogels, eliminating the solvent by pressurizing the solgel mixture, heating it to the supercritical state and then depressurizing and cooling it to room conditions, using supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) at a temperature and pressure above its critical point, where it is transient from liquid to gas).

This method helps reduce distortion in the internal aerogel structure, resulting in enhanced insulating properties and allowing the manufacture of superior aerogels with more consistent and predictable structures.

About Separex

Separex is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) that specializes in leading edge applications based on advanced research and development (R&D) into supercritical fluid chromatography (SCF) and high-pressure technology systems.

Separex is a member of the Netherlands-based FeyeCon Group, which specializes in waste treatment & valorization. The company’s R&D, process development, and equipment manufacturing expertise allows clients to build cleaner and greener products that do not rely on fluorinated, chlorinated, or other organic solvents.

SCF extraction, fractionation, micronization, purification, sterilization, encapsulation, and other technologies based on high pressure applications of supercritical CO2 provide non-polluting “tunable” solvents with intermediate properties between liquid and gas that make them highly efficient as reaction media.

Separex also builds and installs production equipment for many different application fields in the pharma, bioscience, and fine chemicals industries, including SCF reaction, solid batch extraction, and liquid fractionation plants, Aerogel production machinery, and oxidization reactors.

This French-based company is thus able to apply a distinctive Supercritical Fluid Engineering approach in working with clients through every stage of process from original concept through product and process development to construction of industrial scale production.

About BIO Brussels

The interactive BIO conference ‘Disrupting the Future’ will present and discuss principal achievements from the past three years of the EC-supported Business Innovation Observatory (BIO), which provides regular updates on the latest innovative trends and solutions in European business and industry.

The conference will involve some 200 participants, including role-model entrepreneurs, serial investors, renowned industry experts, and high-level policy-makers.

The two-day event opens January 25th at the Brussels EGG Conference and Exhibition Center. Highlights will include individual company case study presentations on BIO success stories, ‘future vision’ presentations from entrepreneurs, panel discussions involving policy makers and business representatives, and a networking ‘walking’ supper.

There will also be a Show Fair featuring displays from companies involved.

More information at: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/innovation/business-innovation-observatory/workshops/index_en.htm