Currenta recently has installed eight fully automatically operated Aquachem filter presses at the Chempark in Leverkusen, Germany. With this investment, the company has achieved a large efficiency improvement by reducing the labour costs dramatically and saving on filter aid materials.
Besides these savings, valuable space for other applications could be made available. Currenta is responsible for the waste incineration on this large industrial park. The flue gasses of the incineration plant are washed and the wash water is purified. This purification system consists of a settling system with lamella separators and a flocculants dosing system. The sludge from the lamella separator system is filtered in the eight filter presses in such a way that the solids can be disposed of.
Until now, Currenta used two huge filter presses with each 150 filter plates of 1200 mm size. The control and the cleaning of these old presses took a full time job of dirty labour. These presses are now replaced by 8 automatic filter presses with each 11 plates of 1200 mm size. This means that the total capacity can be achieved with 88 filter plates compared to 300 plates in the previous situation. The space occupation has minimized.
Automation
The fully automatic filter presses, with their advanced control system, work without an operator. His involvement is reduced to approx. 15 minutes per day. All parameters are fully accessible on the operator screen of each filter press, in the control room and in case required the operator’s mobile phone.
Clean operation
A clean operation is guaranteed due to the innovative and clever design. The filter cloths are mounted into the filter plates with a sewed in O-ring. The filter plates itself are equipped with an additional O-ring sealing to create an absolute leakage free assembly. For security reasons this will be controlled before a new operational cycle will start. This avoids the requirement of a drip tray. With this new filter presses also the cleaning fluid stays inside the filter press.
New feeding pumps
Also new feed pumps have been supplied. The controls and the monitoring of these hose pumps are integrated into the controls of the filter presses. The hose pumps are working two-directional, enabling also the emptying of the feeding lines.
Aquachem and ProFilco
Aquachem is situated in the south of Germany and is producing the filter presses. The delivery program is wide, from small manually operated filter presses up to large and fully automatic filter presses. Aquachem follows its own and strict philosophy concerning the execution and operation of its filter presses, such as modularity and standardisation. All the Aquachem filter presses are equipped with closed filter elements and a closed filtrate discharge.
Aquachem is represented by ProFilco in Hoogeveen, The Netherlands.
