In addition to its construction, a survey of cost was done to compare the cost of the homemade unit with that of commercial units. ’Waste from Ribena, for instance, is full of natural colourants and they can be extracted with CO 2 and then be used in the food industry,’ he says.The present work describes setting up a laboratory unit for supercritical fluid extraction. And Novitskiy is hoping to soon start experimenting with food waste. Nova also works with hemp growers to extract cannabinoid oil for health benefits. The low operating temperature of CO 2 extraction lends itself to protecting fragile fragrances, such as rose or lavender, for high-end perfumes. ‘Since we do not possess any of the equipment of the competition it is hard to make a direct comparison,’ says Novitskiy, ‘but two of our clients who both own a competitor’s system did compare it to our very early prototype and found ours to be much faster.’Īs it stands, their equipment mostly serves the fragrance industry. Ironically, this comes back to the unaffordability of existing equipment. While Novitskiy is confident that the technology is up to the task, the pair have little data on how their technology compares to conventional SFE equipment in terms of its selectivity, optimisation and speed. It also needs to be flexible enough to cater to a range of industries, which takes a wide range of extraction and separation parameters, explains Novitskiy. The idea depends on making the equipment easy to service and operate so clients don’t have to rely on in-house staff with prior knowledge of the complicated technology. ‘This saves on the transport costs and cuts carbon emissions.’ ‘For example, equipment mounted in a 20-foot container can be shipped to almost any location in the world for in-situ processing, instead of shipping raw material to Europe,’ he explains. And it takes time, whereas a rental model means immediate access.’Ī unique advantage for the rental business model, he says, is the option to work off-grid – even in remote locations with poor infrastructure, without the need for external electricity or water supplies. ‘On average, it still costs more than a million dollars to build an industrial size unit. ‘It’s not something that’s been done before,’ says Novitskiy. In their quest to make extraction technology more accessible, Novitskiy and Soshin are working on a pay-as-you-go rental model that could open doors for small companies and industries with ad hoc extraction requirements. Everything is that bit more efficient: from the CO 2 recirculation technology to the preheaters that avoid the gas freezing at separation. High performance pumps, for example, translate directly into how many batches the machine can perform in a day and make it more efficient and economical to run. ‘We designed equipment for the whole process with the goal to improve the efficiency and decrease the cost and hence share savings with our clients.’ On average, he says, for each dollar invested, Nova’s equipment will process eight times more material than a classic laboratory system. ‘Unlike any other company in SFE equipment, Sergey started designing it from a physics point of view,’ Novitskiy says. The differences in Soshin’s equipment comes down to technical details. The CO 2 is usually recovered and reused. Once the target components are dissolved, the flow enters a separation vessel where pressure is reduced and the target components precipitate. It does this by exactly regulating parameters such as temperature, pressure, flow rates and processing time. SFE equipment can precisely control which components in a complex matrix are extracted and which ones are left behind. It enters an extraction vessel packed with the raw material of choice and, thanks to its high diffusivity, easily dissolves target components. Liquid CO 2 is pressurised, then heated up. The underlying process of Nova’s equipment remains the same as the conventional process. Nova was founded to take Soshin’s meticulously re-engineered equipment to market, in the belief that it could break barriers of entry for smaller companies. Without the means to afford it, he decided to design and build it from scratch – capitalising on ten years’ experience in the automotive industry. When Novitskiy’s colleague and co-founder, Sergey Soshin, was working on his PhD in engineering at the Kazan National Research Technological University in Russia, he found himself in need of extraction equipment. Alexander Novitskiy (pictured) and co-founder Sergey Soshin are building a mobile, off-grid extraction unit that can be deployed where raw materials are, rather than shipping huge quantities around the world
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