Hot gas filtration for a European Producer of Calcined Magnesite
CUSTOMER NEEDS :
Filtering high temperature gasses up to 650°C (1000° C with Fecraloy)
OUR SOLUTION:
Porofelt® HG filter systems
A European company mines magnesite which it then processes into caustic calcined magnesite (MgO). Applications for this material include grinding stones, industrial floors, brake pads, fertilizers and animal feed.
The company’s Managing Director explains why the company moved from ceramic filters to a Bekaert metal fiber based system to improve their industrial gas filtration performance.
The challenge
“One of the processes to produce refined magnesite is hot gas filtration to remove undesirable by-products. This takes place in fluidized bed ovens at about 970°C. For years we had been using ceramic filters at our plant. However, these were prone to breaking; sometimes a filter would break every month.
Efficient filtration is essential from an environmental point of view, so when a filter breaks, production in the kiln would grind to a halt, it’s as simple as that. In 1986 we therefore looked around for an alternative filtration technology, which is when I came into contact with Bekaert.”
The solution
“Following discussions with Bekaert, we started using a metal fiber filter system for industrial gas filtration based on Bekiflow® HG. After simply dropping in this solution, production stoppages due to filtration problems were immediately eliminated. We had to replace some of the filter elements after ten years, but this was during a planned maintenance.
We are now using 160 Bekiflow® HG filters per housing, giving us a total filtration capacity of 260 m3. The filters reduce magnesium oxide levels from 300-500 mg/Nm3 to 30 mg/Nm3 at a pressure drop of only 8 mbar. Bekiflow® HG has undoubtedly had a major impact on improving our productivity.
