Challenge
Operating independently as a publicly held company since 1999, OMNOVA Solutions Inc. has over 100 years of polymer and manufacturing experience dating back to its time with The General Tire and Rubber Company. OMNOVA prides itself on strong core values and an inventive spirit.
OMNOVA works to create innovative polymeric materials for a host of applications. At one of their facilities, during the process of creating the polymer as well as other substances, their original baghouse dust collector was not cleaning well with the sticky materials. This particular facility takes emulsions from water and turns them into polymer powder.
“The main reason [to install a Gold Series] was that their old baghouse could not clean its bags well enough when they ran their stickier drilling fluid loss resins,” Len Iacco Jr. of Rolen and Associates said. “The bags would be completely caked up and ruined after about 12 hours of runtime. Over the years, drilling fluid resins have gone from one or two of their products to about 75 percent of their production, so running them through the fluid bed faster helps them out a lot.”
The building in which the dust collecting and process handling take place spans three 30-foot high floors.
“We had a very old baghouse that took up our entire tower and blew down in a reverse shake off that was too gentle to get the product out of the filters,” Mike Adamson, Process Engineer for OMNOVA, said. The polymer OMNOVA creates can be used for a variety of things including oil drilling fluids. Oil wells use the polymer product in porous rocks. The fluid goes into the cavities in the rock so the oil will spill out instead of seeping back into the rock.
“Our polymer can also be used to make rubber reinforcement stronger. Sometimes, our polymer is used in toners to help bind black ink onto paper,” Adamson said. “The same process is used for drying the polymer, no matter what the polymer is used for in the end.”
The GS36 was built on-site, piece by piece, in order to fit in a small space located 90 feet in the air.
Solution
“We have an unorthodox way of using the GS36 Gold Series industrial dust collector,” Adamson said. “Our dust collector is hooked up to a fluid bed dryer and helps us dry our materials. The product moves through heated air produced by a supply fan. Our unit pulls the dust-filled air into the collector and drops the dust from the product down to where we will reuse it. Our dust is not waste, but a product that is reintroduced. Clean air is then discharged.”
Chris Fluharty of Camfil APC and Iacco worked to develop the GS36 for OMNOVA with Dura-Pleat Aluminized filters due to the stickiness of the polymer.
“The challenge was the best part of this project,” Iacco said. “The unit shipped in nothing more than all pieces and parts—no side panels or roof panels. All frames and every item had to be shipped disassembled in probably 250 pieces to be able to place the equipment on the fourth floor through a service shaft 50 inches wide and 80 inches long. Even the hopper had to be split and built in sections to get this to the required location. This is yet another situation only the Gold Series can handle. No other manufacturer has the capabilities to ship a collector broken down into this many pieces and parts.”
The unit was also created with multiple accessories to handle the polymer at OMNOVA like an explosion protection system for ST2 dust. Explosion venting was placed through the wall to the atmosphere and VST back blast dampers for ST2 dust were installed to protect the dryer.
“Camfil APC worked a lot with us on fitting the Gold Series to our building,” Adamson said. “But the Camfil APC Gold Series fit right where we needed it.”
Rolen and Associates installed almost all of the Gold Series because completely assembling a dust collection system as large as the GS36 at OMNOVA could cause mishaps, Iacco explained. However, his team installed the entire Gold Series one piece at a time with no problems.
Once the unit was fully installed, HemiPleat Synthetic filters were used at first. "We started with the HemiPleat Synthetic but then moved to Dura-Pleat Aluminized. The Dura-Pleat Aluminized has larger pleats and is a little more robust,” Adamson said. “We’ve had these for about eight months and haven’t needed to replace them yet." After a complicated installation and finding the perfect filter, OMNOVA Solutions, Rolen and Associates, and Camfil APC are all pleased.
“The customer is happy and the equipment—well, it’s doing more than anyone expected to keep the product flowing with little to no downtime, increasing the output for the entire facility,” Iacco said. “That’s a win-win for the customer and Camfil APC!”