Engelhard offers new separation technology

Engelhard corporation has introduced a family of metal scavenging agents, referred to as MSAs, for the removal of heterogeneous and homogeneous metal remains from reaction mixtures.

At present there are four products in the family, but others are currently under development. 'Engelhard is trying to get away from the business model of custom catalysts, which has historically been the model that we have had in the marketplace,' said market manager, process technologies, Bill Goodwin.

The MSAs are said to be very robust and able to work across a variety of pHs and temperatures, as well as being suitable for use with both aqueous and inorganic solvents. They are available in both research and commercial quantities.

'The big advantage of these materials is that they are truly inorganic bases,' Goodwin explained. 'They use a true silica or a carbon base, then the supports of these bases have been modified in such a way that they have a specific adsorption preference for certain metal species.'

The company has also updated its wallchart, designed to demonstrate the best available technology for a specific transformation. Now available in electronic form through the Engelhard website (www.engelhard.com/technologyselector), it is said to be one of the first websites that allows scientists to select catalytic transformations with demonstrated technologies on a selective basis in the presence of other functional groups.

Currently only Engelhard's standard products are included, but a version is currently in development that will also incorporate best demonstrated commercially available technologies that may or may not be within the Engelhard domain.