CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 72, 2019 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Jeng Shiun Lim, Azizul Azri Mustaffa, Nur Nabila Abdul Hamid, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš Copyright © 2019, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. ISBN 978-88-95608-69-3; ISSN 2283-9216 Effect of Filter Aids on Two Different Filter Media Under High Filtering Velocities Nurnadia Andenan a, *, Mohd Rashid a , Siti Hajar a , Nor Ruwaida Jamian a , Khairunnisa Mohd Pa’ad a , Ammar Mohd Rashid b a Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, UTM Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia b AMR Environmental Sdn Bhd, Johor Bahru, Malaysia nurnadiaandenan@gmail.com A fabric filter is an excellent air pollution control device for fine particles emissions control due to its high collection efficiency. The problem associated with fabric filter is that it has a short life span due to wear and tear connected with the operating conditions of the system. Treatment of fabric filter using filter aids is one of the simplest techniques to overcome this problem. In this study, the effect of filtration aids known as PrekotAC, onto two different types of filter media i.e PTFE and ryton under high filtering velocity was carried out in a laboratory scale filtration system. This formulated filter aids PrekotAC material which consists of activated carbon and PreKot™, served as a two in one filter aids material (adsorbent and pre-coating material) that helps to overcome the wear and tear problem as well as control the emission of sub-micron pollutants in air pollution control. The effect of the various combinations of filtration aids on pressure drop, particle penetration and permeability across the two-filter media under different filtration velocities was investigated. Results showed that ryton presents a lower pressure drop under various combinations of PrekotAC for different filtration velocities compared to PTFE. A lower pressure drop across the fabric filter resulted a higher permeability property of ryton which allows higher volumetric air flow rates passing through it compared to PTFE filter. The study suggests that the addition of PreKotTM in the formulation of PrekotAC significantly affect both pressure drop and permeability of the filter media. The study also showed that the total particle penetration through the filter media is highly influenced by the filtration velocity. It was found that the total particle penetration through PrekotAC 10 : 90 (wt% basis of PreKotTM:activated carbon) was the lowest while the highest was PrekotAC 40 : 60 of the four formulated PrekotAC admixtures. In addition, the total particles penetrating through the filter media was the highest for the highest filtering velocity of 8 m/min for all cases. 1. Introduction Human activities are one of the main sources of air pollution which includes emissions from industries and burn- up of the fossil fuels (Desiree et al., 2018). Fabric filters are increasingly popular as an air pollution control system for the removal particle from gas streams but are sensitive to high temperatures and humidity. This air pollution control system has efficiently removed the particulates produce from the incineration process (Margallo et al., 2012). It has excellent collection efficiency of 99.9+ % for the removal or separation of coarse particles as well as fine particles through filtration process in many industrial applications. Flue gas cleaning agents such as activated carbon and lime are normally used along with fabric filter for air emission control especially in waste incineration processes. The life span of the fabric filter is usually shortened and influenced by the variations of the flue gas as well as the operating conditions of the process. The filtration performance of the fabric material deteriorated with time and simultaneously increasing the maintenance cost having to replace it within a short period of time. A simple technique is to apply so called ‘pre-coat’ agent or filtration aids to coat a layer of inert material onto the each of the fabric as a barrier for protection as well as to allow a uniform air flow passing through the filter media. PrekotAC consisting combination of a precoating material (i.e PreKotTM) and activated carbon. In this study, ryton and PTFE are examples of the conventional needle felt filter media that used in fabric filter unit to evaluate DOI: 10.3303/CET1972007 Paper Received: 04 April 2018; Revised: 05 August 2018; Accepted: 28 September 2018 Please cite this article as: Andenan N., Rashid M., Hajar S., Jamian N.R., Mohd Pa’ad K., Mohd Rashid A., 2019, Effect of filter aids on two different filter media under high filtering velocities, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 72, 37-42 DOI:10.3303/CET1972007 37