In the name of allah, the benefIcent the merciful

Presenter : Eng. Ali Nadeem Mohd. Nadeem Production Engineer Qatar National Cement Company

ESPs

Bag House

Dust Filtration

Cement manufacturing challenged always with fulfilling tough particulate matter emissions regulations. Electrostatic precipitators and bag houses are the main options for cement process de dusting.

Very low dust emissions can be achieved under normal operating conditions when the precipitator is properly sized. A precipitator is usually designed and guaranteed for the operating conditions expected under normal continuous operation of the plant with safety margin State of the art precipitator design, developed through extensive research and development studies and the field experience, in corporate mechanical and electrical features which are process specific. They control the variables which can greatly affect an ESPs performance. Efficiencies achievable from precipitator for many cement applications far exceeds for other collection devices while having lower operating costs.

The ESPs. are widely used for de-dusting kilns, mills and clinker coolers. The performance of a precipitator is totally dependent on the operating conditions of the preceding equipment.

ESPs often fail to obtain the expected high efficiencies in cement applications when dust and gas properties change periodically in these cases an ESPs

ESPs are designed to operate on the lower temperature side of the resistively curve at all times. There are two demands made upon the conditioning tower to ensure the precipitators performance when the mill is shutdown. The first is that the spray system be activated exactly in proportion to the gas through the tower during switch over in order to avoid any high resistivity dust reaching the ESP (the process must also be tuned for very rapid response) this can only be achieved through the use of a computer based control system. The second is that conditioning towers exhaust duct and gas be at approximately the same moisture and temperature condition as measured in the laboratory.

performance is most affected by the resulting change in dust resistively due to temperature and moisture changes.
The transition from mill to By-Pass operation cannot be made without depositing some of the very high resistivity dust on the collecting surfaces which results in a dirty stack for a period of time, depending upon the cleaning efficiency of the ESP. To alleviate this problem conditioning towers are installed in the mill bypass or kiln gas circuit and they are operated whenever the mill is off.

ESPs Operating parameters.

Gas Flow

Operating parameters

Gas Temp.

Moisture Content
Dust Resistivity

The resistivity of the dust after 5,4 stage suspension pre heater kilns is almost always so high that back corona occurs. The size of an ESP for de dusting the gas from the kiln alone while in operation would be so enormous that using precipitator without water conditioning is not recommended. Gaseous leaving the pre-heater kiln in range of 325 350 oC is unfavourable condition for the ESP because of the high resistivity and low dew point. Initiating cooling so that the temperature drops below the maximum resistivity point, 150 180 oc, means a great improvement of the precipitators performance.

Water conditioning reduces the gas volume by its cooling effect thus reducing the resistivity of the dust and increasing the di-electrical strength of the dust gas. Water conditioning, therefore has a very profound positive effect on precipitator performance. This is directly reflected on the precipitators operating voltage as illustrated in the diagram.

As the water conditioning increases and the gas is cooled more and more , the precipitator voltage rises dramatically and the performance improves correspondingly. It is noticed that over a wide temperature range the current voltage characteristics are almost vertical or even curved back, indicating back corona due to high resistivity.
These diagrams show the effect of water conditioning on the precipitators current voltage characteristics for a preheater kiln with conditioning tower and for a preheater kiln with raw mill.

1. Electrical power supply system 2. Access door and gaskets. 3. Electrode cleaning systems. 4. Insulator compartments. 5. Inlet and outlet duct nozzles. 6. Inlet and outlet gas flow distribution devices. 7. High voltage discharge electrode support frames. 8. Collecting electrode 9. Hoppers. 10.Structural steel 11.Thermal insulation. 12.Dust chemistry and resistivity.

Filter Bags
Two types of filtration processes- for filter bags- are currently used in particulate filtration in cement industry:

Conventional non membrane filter bags require the development of an interstitual dust cake (primary dust cake) in the cross-section of the fabric to provide proper particulate removal efficiency.

Depth (convention al) filtration.

Surface (membrane ) filtration.

This results into a process where the dust captured inside the filter material is primarily used to filter the dust and not the filter material.

The development of this dust cake is critical. Packed too tightly, the resistance of the filter to gas flow is increased, leading to high pressure drops, inadequate air flow through the kiln and short bag lives. If the in depth dust cake is too loose, the filter could emit particulate material in excess of the desired emission levels.

The development of this interstitial dust cake is high dependant on the dust type, size & shape, and on the velocity at which it captured. These requirements limit the design of conventional systems to a narrow window where successful operation can be expected.

Membrane (surface) filtration operates with a different filtration principle. The filter medium of a membrane filter is a micro porous film of expanded polytetra-fluoroethylene, laminated to a specific backing material, chosen to be compatible with the mechanical, thermal ,and chemical requirements of the system. If the moisture condenses on the fabric, a muddy cake is formed which bonds around the fabric of the material especially in the case of cement. When this dust cake dries out, it becomes extremely difficult to remove from the surface of filter material resulting in an increase in the pressure drop across the system.

The membrane itself is chemically inert, operational to 260oC with surges to 285oC, and non-stick. Dust collected on the membrane is kept near the filter surface, where it is almost completely dislodged with each cleaning cycle. This surface filtration and very high efficiency membrane allow these filters to operate at higher filtration velocities (air-to-cloth ratios), with lower filter resistance, and with the best filtration efficiencies available to the industrial market.

The fact that the dust does not penetrate into the filtration material ensure easier cleaning of the bag even during moisture upsets or dew point excursions, as the dust cake does not bond to the fibers of the woven or needle felt material, but stays on the non stick surface of the PTFE membrane.

Another disadvantage of non-membrane filtration system is that once a system is in place, increasing the performance of that system entails the expensive addition of more compartments, with a corresponding increase in the filter bags and a corresponding increase in the operational and maintenance costs of the system Gas streams with high moisture content prove even more difficult to filter with conventional filtration material as the dust penetrates into the depth of the fabric. Through careful filterbag design, special materials of construction, quality manufacturing and field optimization of the bag-house cleaning system, membrane filters lasts much longer than conventional filter media.

Benefits of membrane filtration to the industry

Bag life
The membrane prevents the dust particles from entering into the depth of the filtration material. This eliminates abrasion caused by particles inside the material when the bags are cleaned and thus increases the mechanical life of the material. Due the easier cleaning of the bags because of the non-stick surface, less pulse pressure is needed to clean the bags leading to less mechanical stress on the bags during the cleaning cycle.

Another aspect of the bag life is the pressure drop across the filter bags. Filter bags maintain a constant permeability over the life of the bag due to the dust not penetrating to fabric itself. This ensures constant airflows through the filter over the complete life time of the filter bags.

Emission
The membrane is 99.995 per cent efficient on a mean particle size of 0.3 microns. This eliminates dust particles from bleeding through the filter bags thus leading to extremely low emission values. These low values will ensure compliance with current as well as future environmental legislation.

This is due to the blockage of the conventional media by the much finer particulate material. PTFE membrane filtration media are much better suited to handle the finer dust, as the dust doses not penetrate into the filter media. Increased capacity
In any filter where the extraction capacity is not enough, installing PTFE membrane filter bags will provide an extra volume of between 10-15 per cent without making significant changes to the rest of the filtration system

Grinding aid
A common problem experienced in cement plants is that as soon as grinding aid is introduced into the milling circuit, the airflow provided by the filtration systems falls below the required level.

This occurs because the bags clean down much more efficiently after each cleaning cycle leaving much less dust on the surface of the bags. The reduced pressure drop across the filter bags then allows the fan to operate on a different point of the fan curve leading to an increase in flow through the system.

Upset recoverability
The PTFE membrane is hydrophobic, meaning that moisture condensing in the bags does not penetrate into the bags. This enables the filter bags to recover from high moisture conditions such as water injection into the milling circuit.

Because the membrane keeps the dust on the surface, the wet dust cake formed during the condensation is not allowed to bond to the individual fibers of the felt. After the temperature is raised again, the dried dust cake can be easier released from the smooth membrane surface, while it is still best to eliminate all dew point excursions in the filter resulting in condensation, the bags are able to recover much better than conventional felts.