730042Plasma Gas Air purifierClosedLegacy RDA Grant for R&DInnovate UKSemiconductor technology continues along the path of ever reducing feature sizes and complexity, which in turn places ever greater demands on process cleanliness and gas purity. There is a need for better filtration and purification technologies and products to meet these challenges and improve process yields. It is particularly difficult, for example, to detect and remove traces of methane below the 1 ppm trace levels. Current air purification specialists, including SAES Pure Gas Inc. California USA. and Donaldson Filtration Solutions Inc. Minnesota USA acknowledge this as a growing problem and are actively seeking technical solutions to improve this from 500ppb to a target of less than 1 ppb. A new solution is needed. What is new about Plasma Air Purification is that the plasma converts contaminants which are difficult to remove to high purity levels, into other molecular species such as carbon dioxide and water; alternatively, these are converted into molecular species which can subsequently be filtered by existing filtration processes such as activated carbon. The fate of the contaminant depends on the nature of the contaminant itself, whether organic or inorganic, and the bulk gas which is carrying the contaminant, whether it contains oxygen or not. Plasma becomes an enabling technology for existing OEM product manufacturers to enhance their product performance. Also new is the way the plasma is generated. The patent owned by Plasma Clean (Attached Annex 14 US 6,635,153 B1) covers a method of generating the plasma in glass beads and a flow path which ensures far more complete exposure to the flow of gas being treated. This has been shown, through the research project completed in October 2008, to enable treatment to new levels of purity in a commercially viable process.