Many separation processes depend on chemical or thermal principles, such as solvent extraction or distillation, but in some cases, mechanical methods can provide effective separations with lower cost and energy requirements. Eirex (Vaughan, Ont., Canada; www.eirex.ca) has developed a proprietary technology that harnesses the energy of controlled hydrodynamic cavitation — the formation and collapse of bubbles within a turbulent liquid flow — to facilitate separation processes, such as the removal of the heavy fraction from crude oil or oil-sands tailing ponds. “EIREX’s proprietary process, by way of a specially designed reactor, introduces a necessary cavitation-generating turbulence into an accelerating, dynamically pressurized feedstock, such as heavy crude oil, bitumen, oil sands or petroleum refinery streams. Such a dynamic excitation creates areas of low pressure within the fluid, leading to the formation of multiple bubbles. These bubbles then violently implode, generating extremely high, localized temperatures accompanied by intense shock waves,” explains Alex Krasnikov, CEO and co-founder of Eirex. Eirex’s reactor design is optimized to support sufficiently intense cavitation to drive the necessary separation kinetics. Eirex’s rotor-disintegrator module (diagram) delivers narrow-pulse high-voltage discharges to induce electrohydrodynamic destruction, followed by hydrodynamic disintegration, leading to the separation of different liquid fractions of the feed.
In the case of cleaning oil-sands tailing ponds, a new, lower-cost separations approach is necessary, as there currently are no widely available technologies to fully eliminate this waste, and cleanup projects can carry billion-dollar budgets, says Krasnikov, adding that Eirex can provide an efficient solution at a fraction of that cost.
The company has also developed prototype devices for its cavitation process aimed at tailings recovery at mining sites, viscosity reduction in bitumen and heavy oil and polymer recycling. Eirex also recently entered into a collaboration with Canadian life-sciences firm DiagnaMed Holdings Corp. to commercialize a version of the cavitation technology for the extraction of hydrogen from water, which could potentially enable onsite production of “clean” hydrogen at much lower costs than electrolysis.