CF Tech is proud to release separation and purification details on our Lutitium-177 radioisotope purification development. This technology is a fast, safe and inexpensive method for separation of the product from the irradiated target to be used in cancer therapy. After the irradiation, the target passes through a single chromatographic column and the highly pure product of interest, Lutitium-177 is collected. The product undergoes analysis and can be directly processed. CF Tech's technology is patent pending. Process and analysis details are included in our White Paper - available for download - for review and comment. 

This research was sponsored by the US Department of Energy with partners at the Idaho National Laboratory and was performed at CF Tech and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies' Nuclear Reactor Lab.

The United States Department of Energy has awarded CF Technologies with a SBIR Phase I grant to develop analytical scale rare earth element separation chromatography for the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation group within the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Rare earth elements are necessary for the manufacture of green energy technologies, defense systems, glass, ceramics,  catalysts, and lights. Rare earth element isotopes are also important byproducts of nuclear energy and produced for medical therapy. Many industries therefore require high accuracy techniques to measure rare earth element content within a myriad of different samples. Measuring rare earth elements can be very difficult, and often requires multi-step processes to extract and purify the rare earth elements from the bulk material. Existing processes suffer from high complexity and intensive labor requirements. This introduces potential issues associated with human error and contamination. Most importantly, these processes require long processing times, sometimes 12 hours or more, which lead to increased errors in quantification due to half-live losses when analyzing for short-lived isotopes. Better purification techniques are therefore required for advanced manufacturing, nuclear medicine research, and nuclear power industries.
CF Technologies, Inc. has developed a more rapid and more simple process to purify individual rare earth elements from a variety of feedstocks. This process uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf chemicals to purify elements much faster than conventional methods, resulting in substantial savings and better data. During this Phase I development (scheduled to take place July 2023 - July 2024) the process will be developed further for application to a wider range of rare earth elements. This process is expected to be particularly applicable to the nuclear industry, where speed is critical for analysis of short-lived isotopes. During Phase I, CF Technologies, Inc. will focus on separating a wide range of rare earth elements, including the heavy and light varieties, from each other at high purities, simulating real life mixed nuclear products.
Commercial application of this technology will result in faster and less expensive analysis across the nuclear industry, including waste management, medical isotope production, and researching nextgeneration fuels. After demonstrations on non-radioactive material, Phase II will involve purification of irradiated targets to demonstrate applicability to nuclear samples. Commercialization will involve licensing and equipment sales to the nuclear industry and to nuclear chemistry research laboratories.

Thank you to the USDOE for this opportunty! Check out the other Phase I awardees here and the CF Tech award summary!

On May 19, 2022 the Department of Energy announced the winners of the Phase I Release 2 SBIR/STTR winners, CF Tech has been awarded a grant to conduct research and development of an innovative supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) process to extract and purify rare earth elements from Florida's phosphate mining waste streams!
CF Tech has been using scCO2 for decades to replace hazardous and expensive chemicals in process operations. This extraction process aims to open a new pathway for access to valuable critical materials - which are in desperate need.
The CF Tech team will be partnering with industry leader and expert, Dr. Patrick Zhang and the Florida Polytechnic University's FIPR. Finding value in waste streams is something that CF Tech is very good at, whether it's biodiesel or astaxanthin, we're finding ways to find, separate, purify and produce the good parts!  
The Department of Energy release quoted U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm "Tackling the climate crisis and securing America’s economic competitiveness will require the full scope of American enterprise, especially the small businesses that are propelling clean energy advances. These projects will not only unlock a range of equitable climate solutions, but also create good-paying jobs, lower costs, and forge a better future for underprivileged American families and communities."
CF Tech is so proud to be included amongst the awardees! In parallel with this grant, CF Tech will look at a variety of streams from mining to recycling to pursue domestic, economical methods of rare earth element collection and production.

Hyde Park, Boston MA is having their 150th birthday in 2018! Being a small business, it's important to stay involved in the community, to know your neighbors, your neighborhood and to bring positive influences, economy and safety. Hyde Park has been CF Tech's home for about 25 years and wouldn't want to be anywhere else! The Westinghouse complex roots go back as early as 1910 and have housed many manufacturing and service business over the past century. CF Tech has contributed to the community by bringing in employees and clients to eat, shop and stay locally, as well as paying real estate and income taxes. In 2015, we hosted the Hyde Park Main Street's Havana Nights fundraiser and plan to remain part of the community for decades to come, congratulations Hyde Park and remember to shop local whenever possible.

www.hp150.org

facebook.com/hydepark150

With the CF Tech successful FOG to biodiesel and green diesel processes, we should be well suited to assist in this goal by 2030 - we are planning for even sooner. Europe is already showing huge potential in the transfer to renewable fuels, let's hope that the US legislature can follow suit and require DOMESTIC production of renewable fuels to replace fossil fuels.

Yesterday, the Department of Energy released their list of SBIR/STTR Phase II award winners, CF Tech was selected to continue their development of ASTM biodiesel! CF Tech is honored to be on this short list of winner and wishes the best to all of the other award winners.

The list of EERE winners can be found on the Energy.gov website here:
https://energy.gov/eere/technology-to-market/downloads/fy-2017-sbirsttr-phase-ii-release-2-award-selections

In this program, CF Tech will work with a Federal Laboratory and WRR to turn waste water treatment plant and consolidation plant "brown grease", trust me, it's some nasty stuff, into ASTM certified B100. Additional research is on-going and we plan to be providing commercial scale systems to waste water treatment plants and consolidation facilities all across the country within a few years, stay tuned for more info!

A preliminary process design package includes essential information for customers thinking of installing a commercial plant. Let's back up a second - if you are thinking about installing a commercial plant, it's likely that you have performed bench and/or pilot studies to gauge the success of your idea. Provided all the data was promising and you're ready to move to the next step, let me recommend a Preliminary Process Design Package.
This is a key step in the design phase, for a minimal amount of money, almost always less than half a percent of the installed plant cost, CF Tech can provide you with a package that provides and compares the processing costs in addition to the installed capital costs and the value product profits, as well as savings from, for example, recycling the CO2, all at costs pertaining to your location. The cost tables provide key pieces of information: the pay back period and expected yearly profits.
This easy to follow package, which includes a process narrative, process flow diagram, equipment, material balance and cost tables is informational to Engineering Divisions and Business Management Teams alike.

CF Tech has been awarded a DOE 2016 Phase 1 STTR grant to research Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) Fats, Oils and Greases (FOG's) conversion to Biodiesel. Work on this STTR will begin this month in conjunction with a research institute and our colleague Richard Madrak of WRR (Waste Resource Recovery).

CF Tech and the RI will use supercritical carbon dioxide (SCCO2) technology and Idaho National Laboratories Patented Supercritical Solid Catalyst technology www4vip.inl.gov/research/supercritical-solid-catalyst/ to produce biodiesel without water and sulfur contaminants.

The goal of this project is to produce enough data on the reaction and separation of contaminants within the FOG and purification of the resultant biodiesel to produce ASTM D6751 quality biodiesel. In Phase II, CF Tech will design and fabricate a pilot sized facility to be installed at a WRR partner location in Connecticut to process the FOG into biodiesel for sale.

The DOE list of awardees can be found in a downloadable Excel file from the US DOE Department of Service:

An article posted on June 23, 2016 in the Wall Street Journal, (can be read here: www.wsj.com/articles/bitter-truths-1466715201) is siting some very good beers and very well known brewers that are using CO2 extracted hops including Lagunitas, Stone and Sierra Nevada.

Here at CF Tech, we have been supplying systems for small scale research of hops extractions, including fractionation of extracts to provide insight into the ideal operating conditions for the brewers best tastes, we have had the pleasure of extracting Cascade, Amarillo and Zeus, among other hops in-house over the years. The articles "technical" terms don't sound quite exact, but close enough : ) Our method of extraction uses Supercritical Carbon Dioxide (SCCO2) which is CO2 above it's critical state, where it is not quite a liquid nor a gas and has superb extraction qualities. CO2 is abundant, economic, nonhazardous and nonflammable in extraction processes.

Another interest of the major hops extract suppliers is the need to recirculate and recycle the CO2 to save on operating expenses. This is another aspect of design and fabrication that CF Tech has experience in. We provide storage tanks for recirculation on bench and pilot systems as well as the larger systems. This ensures continuous experiments keep going without the need to pause and switch cylinders and tanks, saves on gas costs, and to lessens responsibilities of the operating team from venting CO2 into the atmosphere.

I know everyone is excited about a new DOE solicitation season! Get those proposal writing skills sharpened! We are so pleased, whether we get funded or not, that there are so many topics encouraging the use of supercritical CO2. The uses and benefits are endless. We are planning to send in LOTS of proposals this round and suggest that the rest of you supercritical junkies get writing too - this can be our year to shine! Time to get the DOE on board and reduce the greenhouse gases with the non toxic, non flammable clean and green CO2!  The topics can be found here for SBIR and STTR. Research to make the world a better place, here we go! Leave a comment about what topics you are most interested in.