Each year Frost & Sullivan presents an industrial air filtration technology leadership of the year award in recognition of a particular company’s ability to provide superior technology solutions for the USA industrial air pollution control market.

The recipient company has to demonstrate technology leadership by excelling in all stages of the technology life cycle – incubation, adaptation, take-up and maturity – to ensure a continuous flow of improvements.

This year, Frost & Sullivan selected Scientific Dust Collectors as the recipient of the 2006 award.

“The overall industrial air filtration market has not witnessed many notable technological developments in the recent years, which increases the significance of those achieved by Scientific Dust Collectors,” said Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Jorge Moreno.

Scientific Dust Collectors has launched many new products with appreciable developments. For instance, the company’s advanced field cartridge collector, the SL-HR series helps end users reduce their maintenance and operating costs as well as uses few cartridges.

SL-HR cartridge collectors use reverse pulsejet mechanism and can efficiently remove sub-micron particulates. The other attractive features of the cartridge include a nozzle-based cleaning system, internal air baffles, evasé – a special projection to maximise airflow for better cleaning and reduced pressure drops, same front and back cartridge, and a spring-loaded door. The same cleaning advances are true of its SPJ baghouse series (see The technology).

“With these value-add features, the company has succeeded in achieving lower pressure drops, less damage to filter media thus improving filter life, reducing the need for a cyclone pre-filters, and better options for synthetic filter media,” says Moreno.

Overall, says Frost & Sullivan, Scientific Dust Collectors continues to be unmatched in the industrial air filtration industry for major innovations and its ability to directly influence customer business. It is in recognition of its ongoing commitment to excellence in technology and customer value, that Frost & Sullivan decided to present the company with this year’s technology leadership of the year award in the USA industrial air filtrations markets.

Frost & Sullivan best practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

The technology

Scientific Dust Collectors offers two types of horizontal cartridge collectors, the standard SL and the SL-HR (high ratio). Both of these collectors are heavy duty, all welded, reverse pulse jet cartridge collectors that are used in a wide range of applications and are ideally suited for industrial powder and other sub-micron dusts due to their high efficiencies.Both of these series of collectors share many design features, some of which are covered under the same patents. These shared features include:

• Patented nozzle-based cleaning system.
• Internal air baffles that reduce loading on top of cartridges and maintain a downward airflow pattern.
• Evasé above the cartridge to maximise fan air flow through each cartridge, assist in cleaning, and reduce pressure drop in the collector.
• Patented spring loaded door which provides easy access to the cartridges and ensures a sure positive seal at the proper pressure.
• Same front and back cartridges – eliminates the need to stock two different cartridges for the same collector.

The standard SL cartridge collector is available in 4–24 cartridge standard units with flows from 1800 cubic feet per minute(cfm) to 15600cfm or between 450 and 650cfm per cartridge. The SL is a compact unit that is ideally suited to lower air flow industrial powder applications.

For its part, the SL-HR is an advanced high ratio version of the standard SL. The SL-HR is designed to operate at flows of up to 1000cfm per cartridge. These flows are achieved because of a patented cleaning system and the company’s innovative cartridge cabinet design.

The SL-HR is ideally suited to larger air volume applications collecting industrial powders. Because of its advanced design and high flow per cartridge the SL-HR is able to offer a smaller collector, longer filter life, less compressed air usage, fewer cartridges to change or stock and ultimately lower maintenance and operating costs per cfm when compared to standard cartridge collectors.

The SDC rotary airlock is a fabricated flexible tip rotary airlock. The unit is designed to provide a flexible air seal, allowing larger particles to easily pass through the valve while maintaining its air seal. The 1/4-In bolt-on side plate allows service or change-out of the reinforced rubber vane tips without removing the entire unit from the system.

Employing an SDC rotary airlock on a dust collection system allows for continuous operation without the need to shut down for barrel removal or lost labour time for barrel change outs. A rotary airlock can also minimise employee exposure to dust while making a system less susceptible to material back-up and damage.

Other benefits include: valve sizes range from 10-in to 24-in; a roller chain and sprocket drive including heavy duty gear reducer; available in either square or round flange; fully enclosed steel drive guard; 1/4-in or 3/8-in flanges to eliminate distortion.