Fractal Fluid Control

Since patenting the first fractal distributor in 1994, ARi has developed fractal technology for a broad range of applications. Fractal fluid distribution has been used in processes such as chromatography, ion exchange, adsorption, distillation, and other applications where plug flow characteristics are necessary to maximize performance. ARi’s shallow bed ion exchange systems, which use fractal distribution to achieve increased processing capacity with very short bed depths, are installed worldwide.

As a result of the highly-symmetrical nature of their design, fractal fluid distribution can be used to scale ion exchange, adsorption and industrial chromatography applications to any size. This allows our customers to scale up from pilot-scale equipment to full commercial-scale implementation (with vessels up to 20 ft in diameter or more), without any risk of reduced performance that would occur when using less-effective fluid distributors. This is of critical importance for applications operating at very large scale, such as beet molasses desugarization or direct lithium extraction (DLE).

ARi’s fractal mixers/reactors use precise engineered channeling to achieve fluid scaling and mixing, eliminating large-scale process inhomogeneities and reducing energy use compared to turbulent mixers. Fractal technology can be applied to single-phase or multi-phase reactions/mixing processes, and may be used in applications such as aeration, carbonation, combustion, and more. ARi has designed and installed fractal mixers for a range of operating conditions, from pilot-scale flow rates of milliliters per minute to large-scale operation at 21,000 gallons per minute.