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Industry news
In brief Global technoogy provider IBM is to research water desalination using carbon nanotubes, the company said in its January 2007 “IDEAS from IBM” newsletter. The current methods of desalinating water – reverse osmosis and distillation – are both expensive and high maintenance, it says. In 2007, IBM will research methods of filtering water at the molecular level, using carbon nanotubes or molecular configurations, which can potentially remove the salt and impurities using less energy and money per gallon. www.ibm.com Clarcor Inc has acquired the synthetic fibres filtration business from privately owned engineering and machining company Newton Tool & Manufacturing Co. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The acquired business, including all of the related production equipment, will be moved into Clarcor’s Purolator EFP operations in Houston, Texas, and Shelby, North Carolina, both in the US. Norm Johnson, Clarcor’s Chairman and CEO, said: “We are very pleased that we had the opportunity to acquire Newton’s synthetic fibre filtration product line as it will enable us to further expand the number of products that we now provide to the fibre manufacturing industry.”
Filtration+Separation March 2007
Former Pall president dies Abraham Krasnoff, who served as president of Pall Corp for 20 years, has died, aged 86. Krasnoff joined Pall as controller in 1951 when there were 20 employees, sales were less than US$250,000 with one product and the company was called Micro Metallic Corporation. Under his stewardship, Pall grew from a fledgling filter company supplying metal filters for the process industries to a Fortune 500 company serving a broad variety of markets, including health care. During his time at Pall, Krasnoff also held the posts of treasurer, vice president and executive vice president before he was elected President and CEO in 1969. Krasnoff retired as CEO in November 1989, and then served a three-year term as chairman. He was also a former chairman of Long Island
University and of the Executive Council of the Conference Board, and was a founding member of the American Business Conference. He was also a governor of the American Stock Exchange for six years. Abraham Krasnoff was the recipient of over a dozen awards for community and public and was awarded the NYU Madden Award in 1982 and the Gitlow award in 1996. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Long Island University in 1985. www.pall.com
Abraham Krasnoff, president of Pall, who died this month.
Sartorius acquires Toha Plast GmbH Sartorius AG has acquired Toha Plast GmbH, a manufacturer of plastic components for the medical and biotechnology industries. Toho Plast has been a long-term supplier and development partner of Sartorius in plastics technology including processing of thermoplastics and injection moulding. By acquiring Toha Plast, Sartorius’ biotechnology division plans to continue to expand its technological expertise in the field of plastics, in
particular injection-moulded and thermoplastic components in its disposable filters, disposable bioreactors and disposable fluid handling bags for the pharmaceutical industry. “For our further dynamic growth with disposables, plastics technology has a high strategic significance. For this reason, we intend to have this technology available and further develop it within our own group. […] Already in 2007, we are expecting this acquisition to
contribute positive earnings,” said Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg, CEO of Sartorius, about the purchase. Sartorius says that the acquisition will also help it become the market leader in the rapidly growing market of disposables for biopharmaceutical production processes. The company has already gained an internationally leading position in this area. www.sartorius.com
www.clarcor.com Emergency Filtration Products, Inc has named Philip Dascher as its CEO. Douglas K. Beplate will remain president and a director of the company and will continue to direct the company’s efforts to obtain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its NanoMask products, as well as continue to head EFP’s product development. www.emergencyfiltration.com
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Hollow fibre membranes selected for large US waterworks Asahi Kasei’s Microza hollowfibre membrane filtration system has been selected for a new waterworks facility to serve the metropolitan area of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, with full-capacity operation scheduled to begin in January 2011. The plant will have a water treatment capacity of 360 000 m3 /day, making it one of the
largest drinking water plants in the US, and among the largest plants anywhere to utilise a pressurized membrane filtration system for water purification. Selection was concluded after extensive testing and evaluation by the Minneapolis Water Works. Since 1997, Microza systems have been adopted at over 200
waterworks plants in the US, including those currently under construction. While membrane filtration has generally been considered most suitable for smaller-scale installations, the good scalability of the Microza systems has enabled their successful adoption at many large facilities, the company says. www.asahi-kasei.co.jp
07/03/2007 12:17:55