Air Products Introduces Next Generation XeCovery® Xenon Recovery System

New Offerings Target Aerospace, Lighting and Laser Markets.

EHIGH VALLEY, Pa. – Air Products (NYSE:APD) today introduced two new versions of its XeCovery® xenon recovery system. Building upon the success of Air Products’ initial XeCovery xenon recovery offering, which targets the semiconductor and MEMs industries, the company’s Mark II and Mark III systems have been developed to handle larger volumes and higher concentrations, respectively, of this valuable rare gas.

The XeCovery xenon recovery service is an on-site service that extracts xenon from process effluent streams. An enriched mixture of recovered xenon is compressed and stored. Full vessels are then transported offsite for distillation. Air Products assumes responsibility for owning, operating, and maintaining the units placed at a site, which limits a customer’s investment only to costs associated with installation and utilities to operate the equipment. The high xenon recovery rates can translate into savings of more than 50% of a customer’s xenon costs at current market prices.

The Mark II system is a larger version of the original package that is able to address simultaneous recovery of xenon from multiple process reactors. This enables the Mark II to process volumes of xenon in excess of 100,000 liters/year at a customer site using a single equipment package. The Mark II is equipped with stream selection logic that enables Air Products to acquire xenon only from the processes that employ xenon.

“The Mark II enables maximum process flexibility and minimizes the overall volume of gas we need to eventually move off a customer’s site,” said Gene Karwacki, commercial development manager for XeCovery at Air Products. “This advancement in our equipment package design helps us reduce the overall footprint for the equipment we need to install onsite.”

Since introducing the XeCovery service, Air Products has also seen interest in adapting the service to a variety of other applications that employ xenon in both large and small volumes. These include lighting, aerospace, and materials processing. To address the needs of users of higher concentrations of xenon, Air Products developed the Mark III system. The addition of the Mark II and Mark III to Air Products’ portfolio broadens the service offering to a large cross-section of the xenon market.