Powder Processors See Advantages in Alternative

Tag : Polyester Flat
After enduring frequent filter plugging, extremely short filterlife, and production slowdowns, Brunk Corp. welcomed theopportunity in January 2007 to beta test Donaldson Torit’sTorit PowerCore dust collector at its Bloomington, MN, operation.Brunk pulverizes PE plastic into powder for the rotational moldingindustry.
Torit PowerCore was commercially introduced to the market at the2008 Powder Show in May, but powder processors such as Brunk andother companies that have wood, cement, concrete, grain, soda ash,and sand applications have been testing this complete departurefrom traditional baghouse filtration technology for more than ayear. PowerCore technology has been proven in engine filtration foreight years.
Brunk has four attrition mills that are ducted to its ToritPowerCore collector. “I’m very impressed with ToritPowerCore. It’s a very small footprint for the amount offilter area you get in a unit,” said David Loeffler, plantmanager at Brunk Corp. “I used to have a cartridge collectorfor my attrition mills, but the filters would plug after a coupleweeks, reducing air volumes and decreasing productivity. Iconsidered replacing it with a larger, more expensive baghousecollector, but then we tried Torit PowerCore and it gave us theright amount of filtration area in a much smaller unit.”
The filter packs are only 7 in. tall compared with a typical 8- to12-ft-long filter bag. The filters are smaller and handle more airvolume per filter pack, which allows the height of the collector tobe reduced by up to 50%.
The technology is also available as a bin vent system, which is upto 70% smaller than traditional bin vent collectors. This sizereduction allows the Torit PowerCore collector to be applied in awhole new point-of-use technique. For example, the smaller size ofthe collector allows it to sit right on top of a tripper hood ingrain handling applications. Placing the bin vent collector on thetripper hood eliminates the need for maintenance-intensive zipperducts and a large, energy-consuming central dust collector.
Because baghouse filter maintenance is troublesome, some plantsavoid servicing or replacing filters altogether. Others shut downfor days to change out large, heavy, dust-loaded filter bags.Typically, one PowerCore filter pack can replace nearly six 8-ftfilter bags, reducing the time and labor cost of filtermaintenance. Small, lightweight PowerCore filters have handles foreasy serviceability. They are changed from the clean-air side ofthe collector and can be replaced without tools in minutes.
“We were replacing filters in our previous collector everyfew weeks,” said Loeffler. “We’re just now, aftermore than a year, replacing our trial Torit PowerCore collectorwith a production unit, and from the results I’ve seen sofar, I don’t expect to replace my filters for a longtime.”