Eco revolution for aerosol industry
31 Mar 2015
Technology developed by researchers at the University of Salford, Manchester could revolutionise the global aerosol industry, its developers say.
The Eco-Valve is the result of 10 years’ worth of research to try and solve the challenge of replacing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) propellants from consumer aerosol products.
Developing a sufficient replacement to current aerosol technology has been fraught with problems as many of the alternatives have failed to deliver a solution which consistently performs as well as traditional aerosol sprays, the university’s Spray Research Group said.
“The challenge with this innovation was to take the bench top prototype to commercial product reality
Spray Research Group director Ghasem Nasr
Now, however, extensive testing has shown that the Eco-Valve consistently performs just as well as traditional aerosol products in terms of quality of spray, fine particle size and contents exhaustion of the product in the can.
The research group said Evo-Valve’s compatibility with most existing filling equipment means that a “significant portion” of the global aerosol industry could quickly and easily switch to a compressed gas solution and massively reduce the need to use LPG propellants and other VOCs in the production of sprays.
Ghasem Nasr, director of the university’s Spray Research Group, said: “The challenge with this innovation was to take the bench top prototype to commercial product reality and simultaneously managing the expectation of the upcoming aerosol legislations, the global industry and the consumer choices.”
Eco-Valve has been patented by newly formed British company, Salvalco - a joint enterprise between the University of Salford and AWI Group, a UK-based international engineering company.
Salvalco commercial director Mark Waters said: “When we initially looked at the University of Salford’s research and test results we were very impressed. However, we also knew that taking the Eco-Valve technology out of the lab and putting it into the market place would be a challenge.
“Having presented the concept to contracts fillers, shown samples to many leading brands and demonstrated the product feedback has been highly positive and it’s fantastic that the likes of Colep have committed to an intensive testing programme.”
