Project OM – Cartridge Filter System for Magnesium Oxide Processing Plant including Dust Extraction Ducting

Programme

OM Ltd located in Gateshead Newcastle, is an existing site. They recently purchased the building off one of their suppliers who supplied magnesium oxide for a range of products.

The original enquiry came to Filter Designs via an industry consultant.

The magnesium oxide processing plant provides a dusty yet unharmful place to work, hence the reason for the dust extraction system.

This project needed a very quick turnaround to fit around the sites proposed two-week shutdown, to keep production loss to a minimum.

Site before the install. Originally the site was using an old Donaldson DCE filter with plastic pipe stuck together with tape to provide extraction at the various point across the site.

As the project was undertaken there was 14 points of extraction which was then reduced to 9 to suit the site’s needs. Whilst we were on site our client made a few changes and we had to adapt and design on site to suit their needs.

The Cartridge filter’s designed volume was 12,829Nm2/hr @ 20°c = 13,769Am3/hr. Due to the client needing to have extra extraction points in the future we added an additional percentage on top to be able to cope with the extra volume in future.

The filter itself is a reverse jet ‘Cleanpulse’ filter designed specifically for the requirements in house using our 3D Inventor capabilities. The filter has 49 vertically hanging cartridges and a 7-way pulse cleaning tank to ‘pulse down’ the bags based on differential pressure.

We also included 6 panel filters (HEPA) filter to allow us to get down to an agreed 4mg/Nm3 at the fan outlet current legislation is 10mg/Nm3. We fitted a magnahelic to be able to keep an eye on the differential pressure across the panel filters.

We were asked to move some of the plant about to try and reduce the manual lifting and filling of the bags. We moved the Mill receiver filter from the floor on top on the platform, with a newly designed hood a chute as 85% of the time they would be discharging into a sifter which would sit directly under the platform which we had to make extensions and raise up so the sifter would fit underneath and have the product screwed into it before filling the bags.

Once we had move the Mill receiver and sifter into place we then had to design on site the exhaust and inlet ducting and get it made within the a week to make the dadline date.

The equipment broadly comprises ducting, various hood including manual blast gate dampers to balance the system a simple control panel with an inverter with a pedometer on the front to allow the fan to be increased or decreased dependant on the hoods being used. The panel also has the differential controller inside with viewing ports to avoid duct ingress.

The panel was simplified to allow easy operator usage. We had a paddle level probe fitted in the hopper which will alarm to the panel should the need arise.

The only other alarm on the panel were if the pulse controller unit is ‘unhealthy’ or goes above the setpoint for differential pressure.

The Filter hopper discharges into a fabricated steel bin and has a quick release clip so is easily released.

On the top, we included a coupling and also one on the filter if our client wanted to place a bag in the discharge this would create a bin balance to avoid sucking the bag into the filter.

Due to the different variations of moving the product around site we fitted a flextraction arm which is able to extract from a couple of locations where filling bags is required.

Site Completed

After the project was completed we were asked back to take a couple of platforms down, and stiffen and re-brace some of the existing platforms and fit a mezzanine pallet loader.

We also deigned some walkway handrailing to comply with the sites new safety walkways.