FILTECH 2023, The Filtration Event

Colgone, Germany

14.02.-16.02.2023

J. C. Reinelt, C. Straube, J. Meyer,  A. Dittler, J.Eisengräber-Pabst, T.Grein

Screw compressors are widely used to provide compressed air for a variety of processes. These compressors are predominantly oil-lubricated and disperse oil as oil mist into the compressed air. This dispersed oil needs to be separated in a following step to minimize oil consumption by recirculating the separated oil and to prevent problems further downstream. Therefore, oil-lubricated screw compressors are equipped with downstream separators, consisting of a centrifugal separator and a coalescence filter. The operating conditions at these coalescers are typically 70 to 100 °C and 5 to 13 bar. The dispersed oil mass that needs to be separated is five to ten times the mass of the compressed air. Unfortunately, most of the published literature characterizing the filter media in terms of differential pressure and filter efficiency is on research at atmospheric pressure, at room temperature, and using concentrations far below the typical values.

This project aimed to close the knowledge gap of oil mist characteristics and filter efficiencies at realistic conditions by making inline measurements of particle size distributions in raw and clean gas of oil-lubricated screw compressors at operating conditions possible.