More than 2 million m² of HJS Sintered Metal Filter (SMF^®) material have been produced within the last nearly 20 years, with a peak production of 300.000 m² p.a.. The SMF^® modules are proven for a very large number of exhaust gas filtration applications for diesel engines.

Based on a comprehensive market analysis, the areas of oil / hydraulic filtration and gas dedusting were identified as the most promising market segments for SMF^®. Accordingly, the filter material was qualified in accordance with the test guidelines multipass acc. ISO 16889 and VDI 3926.

The best match with the requirements of the corresponding market segment and the properties of the SMF^® material was demonstrated in the area of hot gas filtration. The focus of further activities is therefore on the development and implementation of manufacturing processes that are as close as possible to series production and the further validation of such filter elements in real applications, including the optimisation of the respective regeneration parameters.

The great interest in the approach of high-temperature filtration with SMF^® filter elements is mainly due to the potential CO₂ savings that this offers. The effort previously required to cool the hot, dust-laden gases before filtering, which is necessary for environmental reasons, can be omitted. Furthermore, by utilising the significantly hotter, cleaner gas, energy recovery, e.g. by generating electricity, can be made much more efficient than before...

Laboratory investigation of the filtration performance according to VDI 3926 were done with different test dusts. They include two typical test dusts and one real word dust taken from a lime plant. With this results a comparison was possible to theoretical values coming from empirical formulas.

An important step for the commercialisation of this new filter technology is the capability to produce filter candles in the dimensional range today known from textile-based filter bags. For this task the final welding step on ...

Similar to the welding of the flat filter media strips to a wider raw material the final welding seam has to fulfil all the quality criteria from mechanical aspects and the possible impact of filter performance.

In customer supported projects first industrial installations of the metallic filter media were done to proof the good laboratory results in the final environment. As an example described here, a filter house was designed to fit in the existing filtration path of a lime plant...

Running the metallic filter media with different test dusts showed some significant deviation from the theoretical expected results. The real word test dust has a...