Clearing The Air With Cartridges
A new cartridge dust collection system is helping Thermal Ceramics significantly improve the air quality in its ceramic fiberboard manufacturing plant.
Thermal Ceramics, Augusta, Ga., a leading producer of high-temperature insulating products, wanted to find a more efficient way to control dust generated during the finishing of its vacuum-formed Kaowool® ceramic fiber boards. Highly efficient dust collection is essential not only for worker protection but also for process reliability - unless dust is continuously evacuated from the work area, the sanding, planing and trimming equipment cannot operate safely or efficiently.
"When we purchased a new planer-sander machine in 2001 and set out to reconfigure the finishing area, we felt it would be a good time to revamp our dust collection," says Ricky Criss, senior process engineer at Thermal Ceramics. "Putting worker health and safety above all else, our chief goal was to improve air quality to the point where our manufacturing personnel could operate these machines without wearing respirators."
The new dust collection system was installed to control the dust generated during the finishing of Thermal Ceramics' vacuum-formed Kaowool® ceramic fiber boards, pictured above.
The products manufactured here - low- and high-temperature ceramic insulating boards - are made with high-temperature insulating fibers that are mixed with proprietary binders and vacuum formed into rigid boards of varying thickness. The baghouse system previously located in the finishing section of the plant also served the entire board manufacturing plant and did not have the capacity needed for such a large area. "Our new planer-sander generates very high levels of dust, so we decided to install a new collector that would serve this machine, as well as two cross-cut saws used for board cutting and a band saw used for small trim work," says Criss.
At first, Thermal Ceramics considered using another baghouse collection system. But after thoroughly researching its options, the company decided to purchase a high-efficiency cartridge dust collection system manufactured by Farr Air Pollution Control (APC), headquartered in Jonesboro, Ark.
Operator Robert Gilchrist watches as boards are discharged from the planer-sander.
"Baghouses are often popular for applications that generate very high volumes of dust," notes Lee Morgan, general manager of Camfil Farr APC. "However, cartridge collectors, which use pleated cartridges in place of bags, offer several advantages that have caused them to overtake baghouses in market share during recent years. Cartridge collectors are much more compact in design and are safer and easier to service; a set of cartridges can typically be replaced in an hour, versus a full day for bag change-out. Also, cartridge filters typically deliver higher dust removal efficiencies than bags, an important consideration for anyone paying close attention to emission levels in the plant."
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