Sintered Metal Sparger, Porous Metal Filters - Nanjing Shinkai Filter

What is Sintered Metal Sparger?

Sintered metal is a solid product that is made by applying the process of powder metallurgy. Here, different types of metals and alloys (bronze, nickel, stainless steel, brass, and titanium) are used.

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On the other hand, Spargers are an industry tool designed to deliver gas into bioreactors, fermentation tanks, and other flotation cells. Also, it ensures the bubbles are dispersed evenly throughout the cell’s liquids.

In short,

• It is a porous tube with fine holesthat ensures the perfect distribution of gases in liquids by thousands of tiny bubbles.
• It is positioned below the surface of the tank.

Metal Sintering Process

The sparger elements or tubes are produced by using sintered metal powder. The powder metallurgy or metal sintering process is all about blending fine powder materials and pressing these powders to get the desired shape. After achieving the desired shape, the compressed part is heated in a controlled vacuum.

However, the process is divided into three main steps:

Selection of powder

According to the technical parameters provided by customers, Shinkai conducts professional analysis from the aspects of metal powder material, particle size and bulk density, and selects and recommends suitable metal film materials.

Compaction

Compress the metal powder into the desired shape. This is usually done with a die or mold under isostatic cool pressing. In order to achieve the desired shape, the metal powder is placed under high pressure. Some of the most common shapes for sinter metal filter elements include disks, rings, and cylinders.

Sintering

The sintered process is an essential part of achieving the required mechanical properties. A vacuum sintering furnace performs a heat treatment process by maintaining a controlled temperature. The heating time depends on the final part application, materials (that are used), and physical requirements.

Note that in this step, the properties can be adjusted by controlling the cooling rate.

Why Sintered Spargers?

Sintered spargers are manufactured by sintering powdered metals to serve a long-lasting operation time and can operate under high temperatures. Let’s understand the key factors below:

• The sintered metal spargers produce 1 mm tiny bubbles than a drilled hole sparger.
• It helps to increase the mass transfer rate of the reactions in a bioreactor.
• Serve 5 micronsto 80 microns without welding or seams on the body.
• Rust-free and durable at high pressure.

The Common Types of Sintered Metal Sparger

In the marketplace, there are mainly three types of spargers available. Let’s scroll down to learn more about their working fields and uses.

Porous Sparger

The sparger is made of sintered metal and used in lab scale-non agitated vessels. It helps to form bubbles 10-100 times larger than the pore size. However, there is a pressure drop across the sparger, and the holes can be blocked by growth. And that is the limitation of porous sparger.

Orifice Sparger

It is a perforated pipe that is used in the small stirred fermenters and placed below the impeller in the form of crosses or rings. The air holes are drilled under the surfaces of the holes, and their diameter is at least 6mm. In some cases, the sparger is used in yeast manufacture, effluent treatment, and production of SCP. The ideal size of the orifice is ~ ¾ of the impeller diameter.

Nozzle Sparger

It is a single open/partially closed pipe that is positioned below the impeller and used on a large scale. When air is passed through the nozzle sparger, there is lower pressure loss, which won’t get blocked. It is mostly used in the laboratory and industrial scale fermenter.

Another type of Sparger is Combined Sparger Agitator. The type is not as popular as others. Let’s check out below what it is.

Combined Sparger-agitator

This sparger is responsible for supplying air via the hallow agitator shaft and emitting air through the holes in the disc or blades of the agitator.

How Does Sintered Metal Sparger Work?

Earlier sparging only worked to discharge gas and included slurry backflow protection. But now, sparger technology usage is vast.

Sintered metal spargers are temperature and corrosion resistant. Generally, spargers have an area that is the connection point for gas & liquid. Sparger’s release even and consistent amounts of gas. The sparging process with higher efficiency gets finds bubble propagation.

When the sparger releases the gas, the generated bubbles encounter the liquid, and gas in smaller bubbles tends to be absorbed fast by the liquid. When several bubbles get merged, they form a large bubble making the surface lost.

The Most Common Features of Sintered Metal Sparger

As we all know, traditional bio-fermentation technology adds extra value in the field of innovation, because it allows higher gas absorption than standard by lowering energy costs. Higher or faster absorption helps to increase cycle times by saving time.

However, you may already get some idea about its features. For more detailed information, scroll down:

Rugged and Durable

The sintered metal sparger ensures trouble-free operation over many years with its full welded structure design and high structural integrity.

High Flow Rate

The sparger is made of the metal material sintering process, which can easily deal with a high tensile strength that is suitable for high flow rates and high-pressure applications.

Outstanding Aeration

The sparger comes with good permeability and pore size is wear-proof and has controllable porosity.

Uniform Porosity

The sparger offers different pore diameters so that you can control the size of bubbles as per the specific application.

Heat Resistance

High temperature and pressure resistance, up to 900℃

Corrosion Resistance

Help to increase the surface area almost 8-10 times than a drilled pipe sparger that ensures 100% seamless construction.

Structural Elements

In catalyst reaction, offer good mechanical properties, including shape stability, self-supporting elements, and support grid.

Uses

Filtration, washing, and drying in the pharmaceutical industry.

How to Choose the Right Sintered Metal Sparger?

In order to find out the right sparger for your purpose, where should you focus on? Well, these are the parts where you should be prioritizing.

Gas Flow & Pressure

The gas flow and pressure depend on the installation cell or working environment. A good quality sparger could stand against various process temperatures and offer sufficient gas flow, pressure, and existing gas velocity.

Air Compressor Capacity

Sintered metal spargers can be used in intrusive and non-intrusive tangential pipelines for steam injection, wastewater treatment, and volatile stripping. That means it offers a good quality air compressor capacity.

Speed of Discharged Bubble

The most important part is to generate high volumes of fine bubble size; it helps optimize mass transfer and reduce gas consumption and energy costs. However, it has been shown that a 1mm bubble makes contact faster (6 times) with the gas/liquid than a 6mm bubble.

Durability of Metal

Stainless steel metal materials are much more durable than other non-metals. Also, metal materials that are made through sintering are also strong. Therefore, look for durable materials like steel or sintered ones for your metal sparger. You will be assured of smooth operation for a long time.

Endure Mechanical Shocks

A well-welded sparger can work in an extremely rough and corrosive environment, resist high temperatures, and endure mechanical shocks. This type of situation doesn’t affect the porous metal in question. Thus those can be used in a wide range of conditions.

Amazing Benefits of Using Sintered Metal Sparger

The sintered metal sparger is made of durable metals that are sintered. This has some advantages that make it different and even more usable than the other metal sparger on the market. Here are some of the benefits mentioned about them.

pH Level Adjustment

Spargers generate dispersed gas. In a chemical treatment tank, chemical plants require adjusting the pH levels (measurement of alkaline & acid). In that situation, spargers ensure the pH level, liquid flowing, etc.

Maximize surface area

Sintered metal spargers release gas evenly through the gas-liquid contact area. This gas emits in the form of bubbles. The bubble propagation ensures a large surface area so that mass transfer is ensured.

Gas and energy cost saving

Sintered metal sparger generates high-volume fine bubbles. As you already understand, bubble size is a vital factor for mass transfer. As a whole, this helps reduce the consumption of gas and saves the cost of energy.

The even distribution of gas

Through the tiny pores, the sintered Metal sparger ensures the gases are evenly distributed in the liquids. The whole process results in the fast dissolution of gas into the liquid.

Shinkaifilter Sintered Metal Sparger

Shinkaifilter manufacture customized and production-oriented sintered metal spargers. Shinkai’s highly trained engineers make these products from membrane materials. However, other materials (304L, 316L, and nickel alloys) are also used. Also, if customers want, Shinkai can help design the right sparger from their specific data. They can use the system for:

• Bio-fermentation sparger Static sparger. Our solution can ensure faster gas absorption and lower energy costs by reducing agitation.
• Dynamic pipeline sparger porous metal micro sparger

Shinkai’s spargers are well compliant with industries of bioreactors, fermentation tanks, CO2 sparging for carbonated beverages, cooking oil oxygen stripping, carbonated beverages, fine chemical industry, aquaculture industry, hydrogen sparging for chemical hydrogenation reactions, and many more. The spargers made by Shinkai have helped many customers to augment their manufacturing efficiency.

Shinkai’s products are different because of their stable shape, high-temperature resistance, corrosion resistant, and self-supporting elements.  

Case Studies of Sintered Metal Sparger Applications

We, Shinkaifilter, are always conscious of researching and adopting the newest technology to our manufactured products aside from developing new ones. Our professionals are working relentlessly to ensure the custom-designed best-suited products for our customers. Our effort has benefitted us in producing some market-winning cutting-edge sintered metal spargers.

Here are some of the case studies from our clients that have been described.

Application 1: One of our clients was from a carbonated beverage company. A carbonated beverage is made of watery liquids intermixing with carbon dioxide. They were facing trouble with the chemical fractions as they needed tiny uniform bubbles to turn carbon dioxide into carbonated. After they changed their old sparging to our new sintered metal sparger, the procedure also started to change positively for them.

For more sintered stainless steel spargerinformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

Application 2: A pharmaceutical company needed to gas transferring process where the bubbles will be 1mm. We understood their requirements. To ensure efficient gas transfer, they need high volumes of bubbles. We build a sintered metal sparger for them. As a result, they managed to optimize and reduce gas consumption.

There it is- case studies from our clients who have used and getting benefits from our spargers. If you need spargers for your purpose or do not know what to do, contact us so that we can discuss and start the solution process.

Conclusion

What Is a Porous Sparger?

When hearing the word porous sparger, maybe you are a little confused. In this part, we mainly list the definition of porous sparger for you.

A porous metal sparger is a stainless steel element that can generate air bubbles. Its role is to produce a uniform air flow and to diffuse bubbles of a specific size. It effectively dissolves gases into liquids without interruption.

The special structure of sintered metal powder filter has millions of tiny pores on its surface. This creates an infinite number of small bubbles. The product has a wide range of applications in almost any industry. It is needed for any process that requires dissolving a gas into a liquid

What Is the Working Principle of Porous Sparger?

How does a porous sparger work, here we have an answer for you.

The porous sparger ensures the distribution of the gas in the liquid through thousands of tiny pores. The sparger produces smaller but more bubbles than the drilled tube and other sparging methods. The surface of the porous sparger has thousands of holes, causing a large amount of gas to pass through a specific location in the liquid.

What Are the Main Application of Porous Sparger? 

Porous sparger plays an important role in industrial production and has been applied to many aspects. In this part, we list some applications for you to learn more about porous sparger.

①The sparger can create smaller bubbles than traditional spargers with sufficient accuracy, usually ranging from 0.5 to 12 microns. And it can be used in the fermenter, like wine production, to improve cell growth in fermentation reactions by sparging oxygen.

②Food and Beverage

Sintered porous sparger, mainly used to transfer gas into a liquid, can be widely applied in the food and beverage industry. For example, introducing CO2 to beer will extend the beer's life. And sparing nitrogen to replace oxygen, juices and oils will have a long life.

③Oxygenation

With high porosity of up to 55%, our porous sparger can generate more gases than the common sparger. So it is ideally used in fish ponds or aquariums to introduce oxygen.

④Pharmaceutical Industry

We always use safe and non-toxic metals to fabricate porous sparger. When you need a sparger in the pharmaceutical industry, you can choose an ozone sparger, by spraying ozone, the water system will be disinfected and adverse effects reduced.

⑤Green Chemical Industry

Normally porosity design ranges from 0.5 to 12 microns. Our sintered porous sparger can achieve high efficiency in transferring gas into the liquid. Using it in the green chemical industry can create more high-quality oxygen to maximize oxygen availability with minimized cost.

⑥Microalgae Process Plant

Microalgae is widely used in cosmetics, food supplements or the pharmaceutical industry as raw material. The porous sparger is an ideal choice to increase the production rate of microalgae biomass and products in a photobioreactor. Therefore, you can obtain large profits with fewer costs.

⑦Bioreactor

HENGKO air sparger can be better used in the bioreactor with better chemical properties. Our sparger will offer sufficient air or pure oxygen for the bioreactor, improving this reaction created by enzymes or organisms.

⑧Hydrogenation

You can use HENGKO's porous sparger to sparge hydrogen for a series of chemical reaction processes, like hydrogen water filter and hydrogen-rich water maker. Furthermore, nano-sized hydrogen bubbles will be generated, making them easier to combine with water molecules.

After reading the above-mentioned, maybe you have known that sintered porous sparger have been used in many industries. If your industry has a strict requirement of health and safety, we recommend you HENGKO sintered stainless steel porous filter made of stainless steel 316L, which has passed the FDA food grade certification.

Recommendation of Porous Sparger

If you are confused about how to select a good porous sparger, we recommend you choose HENGKO 316L stainless steel porous sparger which has passed the FDA food grade certification. Here we list two of them for you in the below.

①Stainless Steel 316 Micro Spargers and Filter in Bioreactors and Fermentors

The function of the bioreactor is to provide asuitable environment in which an organismcan efficiently produce a target product .

* Cell biomass

* Metabolite

* Bioconversion Product 

The air sparger is used to break the incoming air into small bubbles. The sparger is configured with a uniquely designed adapter to allow easy assembly to the mating sparger tip and easy removal for replacement after each batch. This eliminates the need to re-weld the tip or clean the entire assembly. The spargers are durable and corrosion resistant, and the porosity of the media provides exceptional mass transfer efficiency throughout the tank.

Feature：

l 316L material, food grade, safe and durable;

l Bubble size produced-10-100 times larger thanpores;

l It performs in high temperatures, corrosive environments and provides mechanical stability;

l It can survive an almost unlimited number of sterilisation cycles or can be discarded after each campaign.

Application: Used mainly on a largescale fermentors

②Sintered Microsparger in Bioreactor System for Green chemistry industry

The importance of aeration and gas dispersion to achieve good oxygen mass transfer cannot be understated.  This is at the heart of the ability of microbial systems and to a lesser extent cell culture systems to provide the necessary respiration for active cell growth and metabolism.

The micron sparger ring is equipped with 20 micron (or choose smaller micron ) micro spargers for a maximum flow of 0.1 VVM air and 0.1 VVM oxygen.   These micro spargers provide small bubble size under the pitched blade impeller where they are mixed into the broth to achieve homogenous dispersion and maximize availability of oxygen for mass transfer into the cells.

Application：

l Aquaculture

l Cosmetics

l Human nutrition

l Pharmaceuticals

l Food supplements

l Natural pigments

In conclusion, through this passage, you probably know a porous metal sparger is a stainless steel element that can generate air bubbles. Its role is to produce a uniform air flow and to diffuse bubbles of a specific size. It can effectively dissolve gases into liquids without interruption. Porous sparger has been applied to various industries such as food and beverage, green chemical industry, bioreactor etc. When you choose a porous sparger, a 316L stainless steel porous sparger is good.