Perma Pure LLC, a Halma company, is a leading manufacturer of gas conditioning products, including dryers, humidifiers, filters, coalescers, specialty scrubbers, and complete sampling systems. We market these products worldwide for medical, industrial, and scientific applications.
Medical uses include the drying of breath for anesthesia monitoring, respiratory monitoring, and metabolic testing, as well as humidification of respiratory air or supplemental oxygen. Removal of excess water before breath analysis protects analyzers and improves the accuracy and precision of calculation. Humidifiers raise the moisture content of dry respirator air to protect patients from dehydration.
Industrial uses include gas sample conditioning for process monitoring or environmental compliance monitoring. Stack gases must be conditioned to convert hot, wet, and dirty gases into the cool, dry, and clean samples required by analyzers. Perma Pure offers complete systems to accomplish this sample preparation and individual components for incorporation into other conditioning systems.
Scientific uses include exploiting the electrochemical and ion exchange properties of Nafion™ polymer and sample conditioning for laboratory analysis. Nafion™ polymer is closely related to Teflon but has been chemically modified to make it function as an ion-exchange membrane while still retaining the physical and corrosion resistance properties of Teflon.
History
Perma Pure was founded in 1972 by Jack Kertzman to provide tubing solutions for gas drying and humidifying applications.
Nafion™ polymer was developed as an improved material for electrolysis membranes in Chlor-alkali production, where salt solutions are separated to produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide. While extreme corrosion resistance was required for this application, Nafion™ polymer’s very selective permeation by water was a serendipitous development.
Perma Pure purchased the exclusive license from DuPont for the technology to manufacture tubing from Nafion™ polymer in 1978 and remains the sole manufacturer of Nafion™ tubing. In 1992, Jack Kertzman retired, and Halma Holdings, the North American arm of London-based Halma plc, acquired Perma Pure. Under Halma’s direction, Perma Pure has expanded its operations to include a wide range of gas sample conditioning products. Today, Perma Pure dominates the worldwide market for drying breath and is rapidly expanding its high-performance gas conditioning market share.
Halma p.l.c., the parent company of Perma Pure, is a holding company with subsidiaries operating predominantly in the following market sectors:
- environmental control
- fire detection
- gas detection
- safety
- security
Halma was founded in 1894, but its present era of expansion into these target market sectors began in 1972. Since that time, Halma has won several Queen’s awards for environmental services while consistently growing for the last 25 years.
A Halma head office team sets policy guidelines and provides financial and publicity services to operating subsidiaries. Subsidiaries are based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, China, and Singapore.