These systems are designed to help industries, like petrochemicals, use secondary materials to purify process streams. Reprocessing these secondary materials can typically require the use of a regenerator, or stripper. The regenerator usually consists of a column, overhead condenser, and reboiler. The regenerator thermally removes excess water or contaminants and returns the used secondary material to a water-free, pure state, ready to be used again. Chromalox electric process heaters can be counted on to consistently thermally regenerate these purifying agents.

For example, amine gas treating, also known as amine scrubbing, gas sweetening and acid gas removal, refers to a group of processes that use aqueous solutions of alkylamines (e.g. amines) to remove hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from process gas.

As another example, glycol is injected into wet natural gas streams to remove water and dry out the natural gas. In these purification processes, the chemical agent absorbing the contaminant from the process fluid is captured to be reprocessed back into a suitable purifying agent.