aq-PAA™ Product
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Chlorine Replacement Comes of Age
Introducing PERAGEN®
Peracetic Acid Generation Systems ("Per-a-gen")
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Clean, safe, and efficient modules
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On-site and on-demand generation
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Variable production rates and concentration
Peragen® Systems, LLC is a development-stage company that seeks to manufacture and market Peracetic Acid Generation Systems – process equipment modules that are situated at municipal, industrial, and commercial facilities (at the point of use). Peracetic Acid (PAA) is an environmentally friendly derivative of hydrogen peroxide that is experiencing rapid growth for a wide variety of applications including disinfection, bleaching, desulfurization, and general oxidation.
- Disinfection Markets
- Municipal wastewater treatment
- Water reclamation / re-use
- Storm water discharges
- Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO’s)
- Industrial process waters
- Cooling water systems
- Food washing / equipment sanitizing
- Bulk products (dairy, juices, etc.)
- Fumigation (soils, grains, structures)
- Irrigation / hydroponics
- Non-disinfection Markets
- Institutional laundries........Bleaching / sanitizing
- Newsprint recyclers.......De-inking / bleaching
- Pulp & paper plants........Delignification / bleaching
- Biomass conversion plants....Delignification / pre-digestion
- Hydrocarbon processors.......Desulfurization / bleaching
- Chemical manufacturers.......Epoxidation / bleaching
- Odor abatement...................Desulfurization / oxidation.
The North American market for these end-uses is huge, with the disinfection markets alone exceeding $2-billion per year. However, peracetic acid presently satisfies only a tiny fraction of this market (approximately $50 million per year) - it's use being restrained by limitations inherent in today's PAA products, all of which are equilibrium solutions of PAA, acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and water in typical ratios of 15:25:25:35 % by weight, respectively. These end-use limitations include:
- Cost. The peroxide and acetic acid components in the product increase the raw material costs by a factor of 2 to 3 fold. Further, a PAA composition typically containing <15% active means that most of the freight cost is attributed to hauling something other than the active ingredient.
- Packaging and Distribution. The high proportions of oxidizer and organic in the equilibrium products present a transportation risk – current United States Department Of Transportation (US DOT) regulations preclude shipping PAA in bulk – effectively limiting the packaging size to carboys, drums, and totes (up to approximately 300 gallons).
- Safety. Industrial strength equilibrium PAA products are classified as Corrosive, Reactive, and Oxidizer (Class 3), and so require special storage and handling facilities, dedicated processing equipment, and hazardous material permitting.
- Environmental. The peroxide and acetic acid components in the product present environmental limitations with regard to residual toxicity and organic loading (oxygen depletion). In many, if not most, PAA applications the residual levels of these components in the treated effluent would exceed the permitted discharge limits.
Peragen believes that it has first-mover advantage for a novel method of providing peracetic acid that eliminates every one of these limitations. Formed by a team of seasoned professionals with more than 100 years of combined experience in peroxygen chemistry, Peragen has developed a proprietary (patent pending) process that produces aqueous PAA on-site and on-demand in either liquid or vapor form that consists essentially of PAA in water termed Aqueous Peracetic Acid (or Aqueous PAA). Further, it does so at practically 100% efficiency using common industrial chemicals (hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid). While existing users of equilibrium PAA will realize immediate savings, more significant is the enabling of the many large-scale uses that are emerging from diverse industries. For water and wastewater disinfection, for example, the projected life cycle costs for Aqueous PAA are lower than those for any other disinfection technology including chlorination and UV irradiation (the current industry mainstays).
The following recent abstract from a prominent international environmental journal illustrates the opportunity afforded PeragenTM: Disinfection of wastewater with peracetic acid: a review Mehme Kitis
Environmental International, Vol 30, Issue 1 , March 2004, Pages 47-55Peracetic acid is a strong disinfectant with a wide spectrum of antimicrobial activity. Due to its bactericidal, virucidal, fungicidal, and sporicidal effectiveness as demonstrated in various industries, the use of peracetic acid as a disinfectant for wastewater effluents has been drawing more attention in recent years. The desirable attributes of peracetic acid for wastewater disinfection are the ease of implementing treatment (without the need for expensive capital investment), broad spectrum of activity even in the presence of heterogeneous organic matter, absence of persistent toxic or mutagenic residuals or by-products, no quenching requirement (i.e., no dechlorination), small dependence on pH, short contact time, and effectiveness for primary and secondary effluents.
Major disadvantages associated with peracetic acid disinfection are the increases of organic content in the effluent due to acetic acid (AA) and thus in the potential microbial regrowth (acetic acid is already present in the mixture and is also formed after peracetic acid decomposition). Another drawback to the use of peracetic acid is its high cost, which is partly due to limited production capacity worldwide. However, if the d
Demand for peracetic acid increases, especially from the wastewater industry, the future mass production capacity might also be increased, thus lowering the cost. In such a case, in addition to having environmental advantages, peracetic acid may also become cost-competitive with chlorine.
Note: These disadvantages refer to equilibrium peracetic acid products – not the aqueous PAA product produced from Peragen® generators.