Freudenberg Filtration Technologies

What does Freudenberg Filtration Technologies have to do with MEGGLE’s herb butter and pharmaceutical lactose? Well, at least a little. Because we recently designed and built a new filter house for MEGGLE at the firm’s headquarters in Wasserburg (Southern Germany). The handover of the new fi lter house took place just a few weeks ago and represents a nother flagship project for the new “Engineering Projects” business unit, globally established on 1 January this year.

“We have already delivered complete filter house constructions in the past, but the engineering branch of our business has now taken on strategic importance”, says Dr. Andreas Kreuter, Managing Director of Freudenberg Filtration Technologies. The other three are Industrial Air Filtration, Liquid Filtration and Automotive Filters. The new business unit is active worldwide in the projects segment. The goal is to bundle locally available knowledge and competencies to be able to offer customers needs-based solutions wherever they are in the world, more quickly and effi ciently. In the course of the Wasserburg project, Freudenberg Filtration Technologies had ample opportunity to demonstrate their expertise.

“The MEGGLE filter house features virtually every refinement that we can offer”, said project head Jürgen Kempf. The principle is the same for all projects, no matter where the plant is located. Just as clean air improves people’s well-being and performance, the operation of gas turbines relies heavily on air that is as free of particles and as dry as possible, and at the optimal operational temperature. In the implementation of the MEGGLE project, therefore, it was necessary to take into account site-specific differences and to offer the customer unique solutions. After all, the warm and humid climate of the tropics requires a different approach from the Alpine foothills of Bavaria.

A powerful system for the future

The new MEGGLE filter house is 1.5 times the size of its predecessor. It is free-standing and can be completely disassembled within an hour, in the event that the turbine needs to be changed. In addition, an anti-icing system – specially developed by Freudenberg Filtration Technologies – guarantees that both the filters and the bird protection grille built into the weather hoods remain free of ice. This had been a consistent problem with the previous filter house, with employees needing to knock ice from the weather protection grilles in winter. In addition, the new plant includes a 3-stage filter system with particularly energy-efficient pocket and cassette filters. A striking feature of the system is that there are only two filter walls but three filtration stages. This has been achieved by using a patented space-saving  connection system to link the 2nd- and 3rd-stage filters in a single wall.

An additional refinement is that filters can be separately changed as necessary, thanks to a pressure differential monitoring system that constantly checks filter performance. Josef List, head of the Wasserburg production plant, highly values these advantages: “Quality is our primary concern at MEGGLE, and we are just as demanding with our business partners,” he noted.