Ethylene and Ripening Safety

When it comes to your livelihood, you don’t have time for costly mistakes. That’s why safety and consistency matter, and it’s why we’ve made them the hallmarks of our business. We manufacture high-quality ethylene generators and ethylene concentrate that are the safest and most efficient form of ethylene application available. Ethylene…it’s all we do, so safety matters most.

  • Proper Safety...Our Standard

    Ethylene application used to be unpredictable and dangerous, not to mention cumbersome. But 50 years ago, we created a way to do it better. We let you make ethylene, as needed, in your ripening room, versus storing large amounts of it in pressurized and bulky cylinders.

    Some products have the potential to release enough ethylene to reach the lower explosive limit (LEL) in most ripening rooms. With our system there is absolutely no chance of ethylene explosion in rooms that are 45 cubic meters (1,600 cubic feet) or larger.

  • Proper Registrations

    Only though diligent and strenuous testing of the ingredients and emissions of our products, Ethy-Gen® II is registered as a ripening agent by many authorities, and here are the details on three of them. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Ethy-Gen® II for use as a ripening agent for bananas, tomatoes and other fruits under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). It is also authorized by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive’s Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD) and approved by Dutch Board for the Authorisation of Plant Protection Products and Biocides (Ctgb) for use in banana ripening in the Netherlands. More autorisations are in process.

  • Proper Certifications

    Our generators are listed by Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL®) and TÜV SÜD, meaning that they have found our equipment to be safe from any foreseeable risk of fire, electrical shock, and related hazards, when used as directed. Catalytic Generators is the only ethylene generator company with products certified by both UL and TÜV.

    Also, our ethylene generators’ listing evaluation includes documentation that the concentration of ethylene gas does not exceed 25 percent of the lower explosive limit (LEL); this means that our products are exempt from users having to make special electrical adaptions in their ripening rooms. See our blog post on this.