Gas Purifier Regeneration: Putting Circularity into Practice

A Case Study in Product End-of-Life

Entegris is known for, among other things, our filtration and purification systems. Our gas purifiers are used in many applications that include semiconductors, flat panel displays, solar panels, green hydrogen production, and more. These systems essentially take the form of cabinets containing purification vessels. The vessels contain media that adsorbs and captures contaminants, but it eventually becomes clogged over time.

Entegris can calculate the lifetime of a purifier and provide an opportunity for reuse. Our gas purifier regeneration service uses high heat and chemical treatment to strip contaminants from the purification media. The regenerated purifier performs exactly the same as a brand-new purifier, which means that we can achieve almost complete circularity.

Why Regenerate Your Purifiers?

The operating expense of ordering new purifiers isn’t insignificant, and customers can expect to save a substantial amount by regenerating their purifiers instead of buying new ones.

Cost isn’t the only reason to regenerate gas purifiers, however. From a sustainability perspective, it’s also much better to conserve materials by reusing them – and our purifiers can be regenerated and reused almost indefinitely. But sustainability programs of this nature usually only work if they’re easy. Entegris makes regeneration convenient with a three-step process.

Step One: Simplicity

The first step is to build end-of-life into the packaging. This means that each purifier comes with a pre-addressed box. Used purifiers go into the box, the box goes in the mail, and the purifiers go back to Entegris. Once the purifiers are regenerated, they go back to the customer in the same container. It’s that simple.

Step Two: Redundancy

Each purifier cabinet contains two sets of purifiers. One is primary and the other is backup. The cabinet will automatically sense whether a purifier is at capacity in terms of throughput and switch over to the backup, allowing the customer to remove the primary purifiers for regeneration. In other words, regenerating your purifiers doesn’t mean taking the equipment out of service.

Step Three: Cost Savings

Regenerating a used gas purifier costs much less than producing a new one – and there’s no loss in performance. This is a savings that we pass on to the customer, and it means that you can expect to avoid 30-70% of equipment costs by regenerating purifiers as opposed to buying new ones. Factors such as the type of contamination on the equipment, physical wear and tear, and distance from the regeneration facility will all play into the exact amount of savings, but the bottom line is that purifiers are much more cost-effective than simply disposing of them.

Entegris Makes Sustainability Easy

At Entegris, we strive to make sure that managing product end-of-life is both uncomplicated and beneficial for our customers. Our gas purifier regeneration service contributes to our achieving our sustainability goals, ensuring that our customers can keep up their pace of innovation and production while lightening their burden on the environment.

Learn more about Gas Purifier Regeneration Services from Entegris!