My name is Ian McGregor and I’d like to tell you about PTD.
Distillation is arguably mankind’s oldest industrial process and it remains today as one of the most important, touching almost everything we eat, wear or use somewhere along the supply chain. Distillation is a voracious consumer of energy. It accounts for 10% of all energy used on earth for any purpose. Since the energy that drives it generally comes from fossil-fuel-burning industrial boilers, distillation may be considered a major contributor to Greenhouse Gases.
Pass-Through Distillation (PTD) is a new technology known only by a small group of academics. It serves the same function as conventional distillation using less energy per unit of product produced. It accomplishes this through a public-domain process based on well-known unit operations.
PTD’s arrival is extremely timely. The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that the world’s effort to combat global warming according to the terms of the Paris agreement is nowhere near being on target. Drastic measures are urgently needed to prevent the planet’s temperature from increasing beyond 2 Celsius degrees, beyond which point scientists warn of environmental catastrophe.
Replacing conventional stills with PTD equipment is one of those rare measures that can make a big change in a big sector of energy use. Moreover, it is a relatively painless measure. An existing distillation facility updated with a PTD retrofit would enjoy a rapid payback without government subsidies, based solely on savings in energy costs.
There is more to PTD than energy savings and GHG abatement. This website is aimed at educating the public about its many attributes. These include reduction of water consumption, lower capital costs of plant heating and cooling utilities, and the many obvious and hidden benefits of low temperature operation. All of this will be laid out in the following sections.
Pass-through Distillation is a public domain concept. Through this website I hope to encourage free exchange of information about it with no commercial overtones. But the body of knowledge concerning PTD is incomplete without reference to a proprietary piece of equipment called a SAM, a product of Drystill Inc. Pass-through distillation can be implemented without a SAM, but a SAM offers economic and operational benefits. Here is a video explaining PTD using Drystill’s SAM technology.
Some information on SAM is scattered throughout this site. Those curious to learn more are directed to click the blue button below. It will take you to the Drystill website where SAM is explained in greater detail.
The interests of some visitors to this site may extend beyond PTD’s intellectual aspects and into business opportunities. This type of information is best sought on aforementioned site www.Drystill.ca.
Please explore the site, and if at any point you wish to comment or request clarification, you may contact me by returning to the Home page and using the form below.
Sincerely,
Ian McGregor
