BCC has just concluded an exhaustive analysis of the markets, processes, technologies and companies involved in various novel separations, including supercritical fluids, magnetic separations, field-flow fractionation, exsorption, centrifugal chromatography and others.
Fuel cells represent the largest part of the electrically driven sector.
Electrically driven separation systems have been around for decades and some markets, such as fuel cell applications, are more advanced, even though important new research and development work is still being done with fuel cells. These membrane systems allow the user to maintain high product quality without frequent shutdowns to clean filters, as they tend to be self-cleaning with service lives several times that of stationary filter systems. Chromatography is increasingly being used as a separation technology. The overall market for chromatography products is several hundred million dollars in the U.S., but chromatography used for separation purposes is a very small part of that. The most consistent users of this technology are, and will continue to be, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.