Dartington Crystal Ltd
Commissioned in Oct. 2001 this plant was for the collection of fume arising from kilns producing leaded crystal at the works of Dartington Crystal Ltd at Torrington in Devon. The plant was installed as part of Dartington’s IPPC Operating Licence and was required to meet not only particulate emission standards but also noise standards.
The filtration plant was designed to operate at a maximum extraction volume of 83,000Am3/hr. at a temperature of 160ºC.
As Dartington Crystal heat their furnaces 24 hours per day 7 days per week it was imperative that the plant could be maintained without losing production. To this end the plant was configured into two parallel lines each having two filters and a fan. Each filter was equipped with isolation dampers, and any of the four filters can be taken off-line for maintenance purposes.
Our Filter model MWF ‘Semi-Offline’ using medium pressure ambient air as filter cleaning medium was selected for this application.
The dust arising from the process can be 65% lead with a particulate size of 95% < 1 micron. Due to the adhesive nature of the dust and the fine particulate size the plant was equipped with Lühr patented Dust Conditioning Rotors. The object of these being to promote agglomeration of the dust particulate to make it more readily handleable by the filters.
The emission to atmosphere was guaranteed to 5mg/Nm3 of total particulate and 3mg/Nm3 of Lead particulate. The measured value after commissioning was <0.2mg/Nm3.
The Dartington site is in close proximity to residential property and is sensitive to generated noise. A guarantee given that the noise would be less than 35dB (A) at 100 metres. Tests showed that this level was met with comfort.
The plant has operated without problems since commissioning.
