Custom Converting and Automation Equipment for the Filtration Industry

EQUIPMENT:

• Pleat Welding

• Ring Welding

• Laminators (Ultrasonic/ Thermal/ Adhesive)

• Slitters (Ultrasonic/ Laser/ Mechanical)

• Traverse/ Spiral winders

• Hollow fiber/ Memb rane Lines (Lab/ Pilot Scale)

• Custom Mac hines

TECHNOLOGY:

• Ultrasonics

• CO2 Lasers

• RF Welding

• Hot Air/ Wedge

• Band Sealing

• Adhesive Dispensing

• Impulse Welding impeding HVAC equipment to deliver the required thermal comfort and ventilation flow rates.

We employ our 70 years of web handling experience to benefit our customers. Contact Chase Machine today for your equipment needs!

Chronic Filter Failure

The overall objective of filtration for HVAC systems is to render the filtered air fit-for-purpose given the application. However, it is challenging to improve air quality if chronic filter failure is the norm in a typical HVAC system operation and maintenance. Figure 9 shows pleat deformation and rupture of a depth filter installed in a typical air handling unit, leading to leakage and efficiency degradation. Inappropriate maintenance and attempting to regenerate a disposal fibrous filter by compressed air damages the filter media and will never allow the filter to be reset to its original efficiency. Furthermore, squeezing mechanical air filters in limited spaces within air-handling units lowers the efficiency ceiling that can potentially be achieved. Ultimately, such limitations impede any attempt to provide sustainable filter performance to enhance air quality, failing to give spaces for higher filtration efficiency through multistage filtration against targeted pollutants. Appropriate filter selections should look be- yond particle capture and the sole reliance on mechanical filters, which requires an engineering approach to provide sustainable air filter performance.

It is Not Only Particle Capture

Dust removal immediately comes to mind whenever air filtration is addressed, as if dust is the only harmful contaminant to our respiratory systems. Minimal emphasis, at best, is placed on contaminants in the atmosphere, such as radon, soot, carbonaceous particles, greenhouse gases and bioaerosols. We must step back to gain a broader perspective of the contaminants surrounding us, requiring thorough characterization analysis to make appropriate filter selections.

Today, the premise of proper filter selections should look beyond particle capture to entail similar filtration solutions for gases and bioaerosols. However, engineering and employing fitfor-purpose filtration systems should be only one of many foci. We must ask ourselves why we are polluting horrendously and spending tremendously on filtration and other mitigation technologies to re-capture what we just emitted.

Looking Beyond the Filter’s Pressure Drop

The performance characteristics of air filters are efficiency, performance, and lifetime during operation. To ensure such operation is sustainable, we need to go the extra mile and employ online measurement of air filter performance, which can prove invaluable in monitoring its efficiency, not just the rise in pressure drop. Ultimately, that would grant data-driven decisions based on feedback loops for an optimal operational lifetime. Particle deposition on diffusers, cooling/heating coils, and eventually onto our lungs indicate that poor or no filtration was entertained. Failing to comprehend the risk of inhaling polluted air raises a red flag about our readiness to avail filtration technologies to confront particle and virus transmission through HVAC equipment. No wonder pandemics do not come along with wake-up calls; they swiftly storm cities, economies, building envelopes, and our respiratory systems, leaving the surviving to bury loved ones and abandon their built environment.

Although air filtration is not the leading cause of poor indoor air quality (IAQ), filters are frequently sought to tackle IAQ ills. The demand for more stringent filtration standards, tweaked measures, and approaches to filter testing, installation, and performance is rising. However, crafting standards alone without air quality policies and incentive programs for concrete implementation leaves much to be desired. Sound planning, relevant standards, and assiduous guidance to adroit compliance and implementation should be the order of the day to deliver clean air to humanity equally, successfully, and sustainably.

Driving Change

Clustering people in polluted cities cannot be celebrated, and the solution to the rising tide of air pollution cannot lie simply in a filtration delirium to chase every airborne particle. Embracing sustainability is everyone’s business, and bringing about change requires everyone in every sector to make their fair share of contributions. Air quality inclusion is a core undertaking in sustainable urban development so we can collectively live, grow, and urbanize without polluting. Addressing global air quality complexities requires scientists, policymakers, and industry leaders to work together to enable communities to embrace responsible and sustainable living in healthy building envelopes.

Moving Towards Sustainability

Catchy “sustainability” slogans and “green and clean” planet wishful thinking will not amount to much if we lose track of resolving air quality challenges. Today, the increasing population in cities and anthropogenic emissions deteriorate air quality and provide the ideal conditions for diseases to spread, vary, and thrive. It is naive to think that pandemics like SARS-CoV-2 will be once-in-a-generation events, and vaccinations and employment of high-efficiency filters alone would poise infectious diseases for defeat. Humanity must embrace efficient processes and modern infrastructure and depend on responsible policymakers and individuals to tackle the dismayingly long list of challenges over the following decades. Environmental degradation, global warming, and proliferating pandemics hinder our ability to respond to these challenges, which will require scientific and engineering breakthroughs and will be critical for future generations. A paradigm shift is imperative to attain and maintain healthy environments filled with clean air as we transition to pandemic-proof cities.

Ultimately, ascending the air quality heights entails engaging HVAC and their associated filtration systems to respond to any variation in IAQ. Buildings’ system adaptivity based on humancentric concepts and observance of energy efficiency do not have to be mutually exclusive. Enshrining air quality governance within legislation hold immense promise to drive change toward building envelope designs that enhance the well-being of human occupants far and beyond conventional settings.

Dr. Al-Attar is a mechanical engineer and an independent air filtration consultant. He is a Visiting Academic Fellow in the School of Aerospace, Transport, and Manufacturing at Cranfield University, consulting for air quality and filter performance relevant to land-based gas turbines. Dr. Al-Attar is also the strategic director, instructor, and advisory board member of the Waterloo Filtration Institute. In 2020, Eurovent Middle East appointed Dr. Al-Attar as the first associated consultant for air filtration. Recently, he became the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) patron for EUROVENT. With engineering degrees (BSc, MSc, Ph.D.) from the University of Toronto (Canada), Kuwait University, and Loughborough University (UK), respectively, he is now reading for an MSc in sustainable urban development for air quality inclusion at the University of Oxford. His expertise is on the design/performance of high-efficiency filters for HVAC and land-based gas turbine applications, focusing on chemical and physical characterization of airborne pollutants.

References:

1. Incropera, F.P., 2016. Climate change: a wicked problem: complexity and uncertainty at the intersection of science, economics, politics, and human behavior. Cambridge University Press.

2. EPA, 2005. Review of the national ambient air quality standards for particulate matter: policy assessment of scientific and technical information. OAQPS Staff Paper.

3. Hinds, W.C. and Zhu, Y., 2022. Aerosol technology: properties, behavior, and measurement of airborne particles. John Wiley & Sons.

4. Wakeman, R., 2007. The influence of particle properties on filtration. Separation and Purification Technology, 58(2), pp.234-241.

5. Al-Attar, I.S., 2011. The effect of pleating density and dust type on performance of absolute fibrous filters (Doctoral dissertation, Loughborough University).

6. IEA (2018), The Future of Cooling, IEA, Paris https://www.iea. org/reports/the-future-of-cooling, License: CC BY 4.0.

7. IEA (2023), World Energy Outlook 2023, IEA, Paris https://www. iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023, License: CC BY 4.0 (report); CC BY NC SA 4.0 (Annex A).