This article contains paid for content produced in collaboration with Puragen.

Puragen (formerly CPL Activated Carbons) has been awarded a Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice, recognizing the company’s novel process for handling high-sulphur spent carbons from the biogas and biomethane sector, allowing them to be fully recycled, avoiding disposal via landfilling or incineration.

The company, a member of the REA, has developed the seemingly unique process, which last year also picked up the prize for Energy Innovation at the National Recycling Awards. It addresses a major challenge in the biogas sector, namely the need to remove toxic and corrosive hydrogen sulphide gas. While activated carbon is the best available technology, the tendency of elemental sulphur to remain trapped within the media has tended to disqualify the use of a traditional approach – thermal reactivation – to recover the spent carbon.

Puragen’s process means high-sulphur spent carbon can be reprocessed at the group’s thermal reactivation facility in the UK. The reactivated carbon is ready for use in future purification applications, preventing thousands of tons of waste each year.