The 0.5mm-sized dust from the pill coater was so plentiful at this major midwestern vitamin maker that the maintenance crew had to change filters in their dust collector every 9 days!
Although the dust collectors — Donaldson® Torit® Downflo® II (DFT) and Downflo Oval (DFO) models — are self-cleaning (pulse jet), the non-Donaldson filter cartridges the customer had installed were made with a depth-loading media. The purchase price of these commodity filters was low, but the cost of downtime and labor every 9 days was too high!
Now they’ve switched back to Donaldson Torit
Ultra-Web® nanofiber filter cartridges. Capturing most of the submicron dust on the surface where it can be pulsed off, Ultra-Web technology prevents premature filter clogging.
When used in self-cleaning dust collectors, Ultra-Web filter cartridges are periodically cleaned. The surface loading characteristic means that the collected dust is cleaned off fairly easily and the ΔP across the filters is reduced to acceptable limits.
In this case, the vitamin manufacturer is able to keep ΔP within the operating range of 0.4 and 0.8 “wg. So far, they’ve gotten 2½ months of life from the Ultra-Web cartridges, without significant ΔP increase.
Filter life increased from 9 days to over 75 days!