UConn TCS Supports Development of Technology to Clean Greenhouse Gas Fumigant
UConn Engineering Commercialization Expert services (TCS) is doing the job with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven (CAES) to commercialize a technology that can make used emissions of a greenhouse fuel fumigant safe to launch into the environment.
UConn TCS is working to assist Connecticut’s entrepreneurial ecosystem past the College, by supporting non-UConn scientists, like those at CAES, commercialize their intellectual house.
Sulfuryl fluoride is a widespread fumigant used to address insect infestations in structures and, significantly, make, lumber, and other internationally transported solutions that could be carrying invasive pests.
Sulfuryl fluoride was initially touted as an alternate to methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting gasoline. Methyl bromide was beforehand the common fumigant for intercontinental shipments.
“It was hailed as a fantastic substitute for methyl bromide simply because it was rather powerful and it was not an ozone depleting gasoline,” Joe Pignatello, distinguished main scientist emeritus at CAES, states.
Having said that, experts have located that sulfuryl fluoride is a greenhouse fuel. Sulfuryl fluoride has a international warming possible (GWP) of 4780, in comparison to carbon dioxide, which has a GWP of just one. GWP is a evaluate of how significantly infrared thermal radiation a greenhouse gas additional to the environment would take in around a specified time body, in this scenario 100 years.
When sulfuryl fluoride is made use of to fumigate imports, it is pumped into a significant shipping container. The sulfuryl fluoride continues to be in the fumigation chamber for hours and then followers blow it out into the environment.
Operating on a U.S. Section of Agriculture-funded undertaking, Pignatello made a technology that can cleanse sulfuryl fluoride fumes just before they are produced into the environment.
Alternatively than quickly releasing the fuel into the ambiance, with Pignatello’s technological innovation, the gas would to start with move by means of a tube into a “spray scrubber.”
The spray scrubber is a tank loaded with liquid. The scrubber produces a mist which mixes with the incoming gasoline stream that contains the sulfuryl fluoride. The mist droplets have a specific chemical makeup that allows them to respond with sulfuryl fluoride which cleanses the gasoline stream.
“Our system will involve a unique mix of reagents that are set into the liquid of the tank and respond rapidly with sulfuryl fluoride,” Pignatello claims.
Then, after the gasoline is “cleaned” it can be properly ventilated into the atmosphere.
The wastewater can easily be addressed to make it safe to dispose. The scrubbing course of action produces fluoride, which can be reworked into an insoluble, harmless compound – calcium fluoride – and sulfate, which obviously takes place in new and sea water.
“I feel the foreseeable future appears to be quite superior for this technologies,” Pignatello. “Because fumigators are going to have to discover a way to avoid spent fumes from going into the environment.”
UConn TCS has assisted CAES in developing an distinctive choice agreement with a non-public business to commercialize this patent-pending technological know-how.
This partnership, facilitated by TCS, serves as the initial of with any luck , far more these kinds of commercialization engagements the UConn place of work will facilitate for its exterior study partners.
“This is just a single of several strategies that UConn is expanding the innovation ecosystem in Connecticut and beyond,” Christopher Conners, TCS licensing director for life sciences, states.
