Why is Filtration So Important in
Industry?
Filtration plays a vital role in improving process efficiency and plant safety while reducing a plant’s costs and environmental impacts. Filtration can keep both gases and liquids clean and extend the life of plant components. Filtration helps plant processes to operate at the lowest possible cost and improves overall process efficiency. This means that equipment will be protected from unnecessary wear or pluggage, catalysts will be conserved, operations will experience less down time and product quality will be greatly improved.
In the process industry there are very large compressors, pumps, reactors and heat exchangers that, when fluids running through them are properly filtered, you help minimize component wear or plugging. If components wear out, obviously you need to shut down or isolate the process so you can conduct repairs. The more frequently that happens, the more money it costs. A good example of this is that of a nitric acid plant. In a nitric acid plant, a fixed-bed catalyst system is very sensitive to iron (in the form of rust). When rust gets into the reactor, it tends to degrade the catalyst gauze (which is made of a very expensive platinum compound) reducing the conversion efficiency and resulting in increased use of raw materials to create the product.
Filtration
is also necessary for environmental purposes.
When processing crude oil, for example, you wouldn’t normally expect to find
fine micron levels of filtration, especially since they process tens of
thousands of barrels of fluids a day. However, as the requirements to minimize
waste fluid discharge increase and the industry moves toward the production of
more environmentally friendly fuels.
They will need to use much more critical and fine filtration and
separation equipment.
Refined fuel producers are required to significantly reduce the sulfur content of liquid fuels to allow cleaner burning. To do this, more sophisticated and often expensive catalyst is used in large quantities.
We’re
seeing that finer filtration can greatly improve process efficiency and
increase product yields. It makes
economic sense to put in a system that actually does the job. Fires or explosions
can result if catalyst from a reaction step passes downstream in the process.
This is where filtration can play a role in improving safety at a plant.
In nuclear power plants, recirculating water will pick up fine particles and radioactive debris. This debris must be filtered out, both to reduce the amount of radioactive material flowing through the plant, and to remove the gritty residue from the process that, over time, wears out pumps and seals. If these seals fail, leaks can occur and radiation can escape.
To
be profitable in business today, processes need to be faster and have better
results. Filtration helps take out some of the variability and unknowns in a
process and can help manufacturers produce better products that respond to
consumer demand. An example is the
automobile industry. Consumers are demanding a perfct paint job, regardless of
the price of the vehicle. Defects are unacceptable, and auto manufacturers are
realizing that it's more cost effective to improve filtration (to reduce paint
defects) than to repaint body panels.