CEE 452/652

Week 12, Lecture 2 –

Fabric Filters
Dr. Dave DuBois
Division of Atmospheric Sciences,
Desert Research Institute
 Today’s topics
• Today’s topic: Fabric filters & baghouses
• Read chapter 6
• Presentation topic due today
• Reminder: all lecture materials are on
course website:
http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/daved/CEE_452-652.html

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 Types of Particulate Control
9Gravitational Settlers
9Cyclones
• Fabric Filters
• Electrostatic Precipitators
• Wet Scrubbers

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 Basic Elements
• Separates dry particles from a gas stream
through fabric filtration

• Dusty gas flows into a number of filter bags

placed in parallel, leaving dust on the fabric
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 Woven Fabric
• Particles deposit on surface of fabric
• Woven fabric has low collection efficiency
• Dust layer presents a significant surface
for collection
FLOW

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Felt Fabric
• Surface of felt
supports dust
cake
• Used in pulse jet
filters

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 The Pros and Cons
Pros
– High collection efficiency even for small particles
– Can operate on a wide variety of dust types
– Modular in design
– Can operate over an extremely wide range of
volumetric flow rates
– Require reasonably low pressure drops
Cons
– Require large floor space
– Fabric can be harmed by high temperatures or
corrosive gases
– Can’t operate in moist environments (fabric can be
“blinded”)
– Potential for fire or explosions
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 Baghouse Collection Efficiency
• Collection efficiency is generally not a
concern in the design of a baghouse
• A well designed, well maintained fabric
filter that is operated properly generally
collects particles from 0.5 to 100 um at
efficiencies of greater than 99%
• The remaining design involves optimizing
filtering velocity to balance capital costs vs
operating costs
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Baghouse Collection Efficiency

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 Types of Baghouses
• Reverse-air
• Shaker
• Pulse-jet
• Cartridge filter designs

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 Reverse Air Baghouse
• Uses compartmentalized designs
• Named “reverse air” from the cleaning
method
• During cleaning the gas flow through a
compartment is stopped, and filtered gas
is passed in a reverse direction through
the bags
• Bags are hung from top of compartments
• Bags attached by springs on top
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Reverse Air Baghouse

Bags are 20 to
35 feet long

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 Reverse Air Baghouse
Bottoms of bags are
attached to a plate called
tube sheet mounted right
above the hopper Dust
Cake
Dirty air enters the inside of
each reverse air bags

The dust cake accumulates

on the interior surfaces of
the bags

The dust cake causes most

of the filtration Tube sheet

Air flow
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 Reverse Air Baghouse
• To gauge proper operation the following
may be used:
– Double pass transmissometers
• Measure opacity in breaching and/or output
– Bag-break monitors
– Static pressure gauges
• Measure overall pressure drop
• Measure compartment pressure drop
• Measure pressure of reverse air stream during
cleaning
– Inlet and outlet gas temperatures
• Measure proper temperature for fabric 14
 Pulse Jet Baghouse
• Named “pulse jet” because of the
cleaning method
• Pulse of compressed air is used for
cleaning each of the bags
• Dirty gas enters upper portion of hopper
and passes vertically up between the
bags during filtering
• Dust accumulates on the outside
surfaces of the bags
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Pulse Jet Baghouse

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 Pulse Jet Bags
Clean air Clean air

Cleaned air enters the

cylindrical bags and
moves upward into the
clean gas plenum at
the top of the
baghouse

The outlet duct from

the plenum takes the
cleaned air to the fan
and out to the stack

Air flow 17
Pulse Jet Bags
Looking up into an array of bags

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Pulse Jet Baghouse
• Bags are cleaned by
introducing a high-pressure
pulse of compressed air at
the top of each bag
• Pulse generates a pressure
wave that travels down
inside the bag
• This cracks the dust cake on
the outside of the bags and
causes some of the dust to
fall into the hopper
• Cleaning is done row by row
while baghouse is operating
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 Pulse Jet Baghouses
• Top access design
– Number of large hatches across the top of the
baghouse for bag replacement and
maintenance
• Side access design
– One large hatch on the side for access to the
bags
– Single small hatch on the top of the baghouse
shell for routing inspection
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Shaker Baghouses
• Shaking bag
in a simple
harmonic or
sinusoidal
motion on the
order of a few
inches
• Every 30s to
few minutes

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 Filter Characteristics
• Filter medium serves as a structural
support rather than impaction surface
• Packing Density
fiber volume
α= = 1 - porosity
total volume
For fiber filter, α < 0.1
For woven filter, α ~ 0.3

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 Filter Materials
• Woven fabric
– Interlaced yarn type
• Felted fabric
– Randomly oriented fibers
• Membranes
– PTFE laminated to a woven fabric or felt
• Sintered metal fibers
– Small metal fibers randomly oriented on a cylinder
• Ceramic cartridges
– Fabricated on honeycomb or cylinder
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Material Characteristics

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 Pressure Drops
• Pressure drop across the baghouse is
given as ΔP = ΔPf + ΔPp + ΔPs
ΔPf = fabric pressure drop
ΔPp = particle layer pressure drop
ΔPs = structure pressure drop

• Darcy’s equation for pressure drop across

particle layer of depth, Dp
D p μV
ΔPp =
And similarly for a
pressure drop across the
60 K p fabric 25
 Air to Cloth Ratio
• Filtration velocity (average velocity) also
known as the air to cloth ratio
Q
V= Q = volumetric gas flow rate, m3/min
A = cloth area, m2
A

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 Dust Cake Growth
• Over time, the depth of the dust layer (dust
cake) increases

LV t
Dp =
ρL
L = dust loading, kg/m3
V = filtration velocity, m/s
t = time of operation, min
ρL = bulk density of the particulate layer, kg/m3

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 Pressure Drop
ΔP = ΔPf + ΔPp (+ ΔPs ) Pressure drop through the
baghouse
= K1V + K 2 (LVt )V
Areal Dust Density W = LVt
L = dust loading, kg/m3
Filter drag
ΔP
S= ⇒ S = K1 + K 2W in Pa-min/m
V
K1 and K2 to determined empirically (resistance factor)
ΔPf = fabric pressure drop
ΔPf = particle layer pressure drop
ΔPs = structure pressure drop
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 Pressure Drop
Shows typical filter drag vs dust density curves for various degrees of
cleaning

K2 =

K1 =

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 Time to Clean
t f = N (t r + t c ) − t c
tf = filtration time, min
tr = run time, min
tc = cleaning time, min
N = total number of compartments

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Q
 Applications
• A baghouse for a 250 MW utility boiler may have 5,000
separate bags with a total fabric area approaching
500,000 square feet
• Most cement plants have between 40 and 80 separate
fabric filter control systems ranging in size from 30 actual
cubic meters per minute capacity to more than 100,000
actual cubic meters per minute capacity
• Typical asphalt plants use either stationary or portable
baghouses that are capable of handling 300 to 2,200
cubic meters per minute at 300 - 400 degrees F.
Material collected is aggregate dust from an asphalt
drum mix or batch plant drying process.

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Hot Mix Asphalt Plants

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 Asphalt plant

baghouse

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 Asphalt plant

Asphalt
drum
baghouse
baghouse

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 Asphalt plant
Inlet to
baghouse

Pulse jet baghouse

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 Asphalt plant

flow

cyclone baghouse

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