DESOTEC, founded in 1990, is the leading provider of mobile filtration solutions in Europe and is establishing this leading market position in the United States. Thanks to their unique, flexible, circular service concept and the extensive expertise built up over many decades, DESOTEC unburdens their industrial customers and help them make their operations or products more sustainable.
Their customer base is constantly growing thanks to a strong focus on 24/7 service and a commitment to design and deliver the best solution in close dialogue with companies. The company has today more than 400 employees, united in what they call ‘Generation D.’, all committed to building a cleaner, greener world for future generations.
Easy Engineering: What products and services do you offer?
We provide sustainable mobile filtration solutions for the industry, a filtration-as-a-service to help our customers achieve their sustainability commitment. Our solutions include the rental of mobile filter units filled with activated carbon, which is recommended as the best available technology (BAT) for the treatment of many contaminants, such as VOCs, odour or PFAS. We assist a wide range of industries (e.g., biogas, food, specialty chemicals, waste and wastewater management, etc.) along the whole purification value chain.
Our team of experts work with each customer to assess their purification needs, based on the pollutants and concentrations, among many other parameters. Following this analysis, they will suggest the most optimal filter unit and carbon grade, supported by lab and/or pilot tests.
DESOTEC’s service closes the purification loop. This includes the treatment and recycling of the spent carbon waste via our state-of-the art reactivation plants. Doing so, we significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our customers’ industrial activity.
E.E: What are clients looking for when they are renting your filtration solutions?
Companies usually call upon us when they face an environmental issue such as a peak in their emissions, as they must comply with environmental regulations and their operating permits.
Our filtration solutions help customers keep their emissions below the limits imposed by law, future-proofing their operations and making them more sustainable. But our full service goes beyond the filtration: we take care of the filtration waste and treat it – in full compliance with the strictest environmental limits – in our reactivation plants. This makes our process fully circular, closing the loop to recycle and reuse most of the activated carbon, being even more sustainable.
Also, customers appreciate the flexibility and modularity of our rental solution as DESOTEC mobile filters can adapt to rapid operational changes, be scaled up or down, and also be used for temporary needs.
Finally, DESOTEC’s experts support them 24/7 and take care of everything: analysis of the purification needs, solution definition, delivery, installation, exchange, and safe waste disposal away from their site(s).
E.E: What should clients know when they are looking for a purification solution?
Every project has unique traits such as production parameters, pollutant concentration, flowrate, etc. Consequently, clients in search of a purification solution, irrespective of the industrial application needed, ought to seek out a team of seasoned and supportive engineers with a profound understanding of their domain.
Clients often seek more than just a technical solution; they want a partner who can alleviate their concerns. Our commitment goes beyond delivering a service – we aim to be the trusted ally that allows clients to eliminate worries, offering adaptable and flexible purification solutions that cater to their unique needs. With our team’s proficiency and a client-focused approach, we are well-equipped to contribute to the success of their purification endeavours.
E.E: Tell us a short guide for clients who want to call upon your services?
Be it a sudden spike in emissions, new legislation limits to comply with, or an odour complaint from your neighbours, DESOTEC can come to the rescue. Customers can give us a call or just fill in our website contact form with as many details as possible on their purification needs. We’ll get back to them within 48h to ask any additional information (e.g., data, specifications, photos, etc.) and recommend the best filter setup. We assemble the filter(s) and deliver it (or them) on the customer’s site. The on-site installation of our filtration solutions only takes about 30 minutes.
E.E: Why do clients choose your mobile filtration solutions over other existing purification solutions on the market?
The modularity of our mobile filters is a key advantage over fixed installations. That’s especially true for companies who often deal with rapid variations in their production processes, or for temporary needs. Also, once saturated, we pick up the closed filter and take it back to our facilities for the reactivation of the spent activated carbon. So no waste carbon is handled at customers’ site. DESOTEC filters are a plug-and-play technology. They can be easily exchanged in 30 min or so, which translates into a minimal downtime. Plus, we can add more units, in parallel or series, or remove them to fit customers’ changing needs. This flexibility translates into lower financial risks for businesses. Also, unlike fixed installations, our mobile filters are available for rental, thus reducing the cost of ownership.
E.E: What sets your filtration solutions apart? What innovative / special features do they have?
The main one would be their circularity. The fact that we reactivate the spent carbon for it to be reused is the essence of our closed-loop business model. Sustainability is strongly embedded into our mission and all parts of the business.
Our R&D team is continuously exploring the use of renewable raw materials to make our activated carbon even more climate friendly. On top of that, purifying our customers’ emissions via a reactivated carbon rather than a virgin one lets companies reduce their CO2 footprint.
DESOTEC reactivation process is also applicable to PFAS-saturated carbon. PFAS, aka “forever chemicals”, are a huge problem which is now coming to the surface across the world, so more stringent emission limits will come soon. We’re proud to say that, after years of R&D, DESOTEC’s reactivation can fully destroy PFAS in a safe and eco-friendly manner, thus complying with the EU persistent organic pollutants (POPs) regulation.
Of course, one of our filtration solutions’ key feature is its high modularity, facilitating the adaptation of the filtration setup to on-site requirements and changing needs by simply adding or removing a mobile filter. This is made all the easier by the fact that the filters are effortlessly plugged in and out thanks to our unique plug-and-play connection system.
E.E: What new services are you going to launch next year?
Our first-of-its-kind production facility producing European-made activated carbon for the biogas market will go live in the summer 2024. This game-changing plant will receive spent high-sulphur carbon and valorise it into a new activated carbon of equivalent quality to the virgin one.
This is a first in the industry, a truly circular process leading to the local production of high-quality activated carbon. This local supply future-proofs both DESOTEC and biogas producers in Europe against potential disruptions along non-EU value chains, being a huge competitive advantage.
Furthermore, sourcing up to 80% less coal-based virgin activated carbon from outside Europe, we’ll reduce our GHG emissions, thus making our filtration service even more climate-friendly.
Aside from more resilient and sustainable operations, our biogas customers will benefit from a safer and law-proof disposal route for high-sulphur carbon compared to incineration, which should certainly count for something in the years to come.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/desotec-activated-carbon/
