General Process Information

A certain European refinery is producing a biodiesel fuel which is being sold on the consumers market.
This process in the refinery was originally built by a EPC company who had been partnering up with
Pall. Regarding filtration Pall is one of the industry standards for years. Nevertheless, after two years
of operating the system, the customer saw the change out frequency of filter elements go up without
any logical explanation. The process parameters were still the same as two years before.
This filtration application is utilizing High Flow elements with Liquid/Liquid Coalescers & Separators
downstream of this application. The pre filters (two pieces) are located in a train with two vessels
followed by one vessel with both one Liquid/Liquid Coalescer & Separator. There are currently four
trains running in this process.
Problem Analysis
The lifetime of the coalescers and separators was suddenly 30% shorter than originally. These had to
be exchanged every six weeks instead of every nine weeks. Knowing that these high end elements
are quite expensive, this would mean that in one year an additional three coalescers and three
separators needed to be exchanged per year per train. So, a total of twelve elements of both series
needed to be purchased extra, let alone the additional costs of the extra maintenance.
When exchanging the elements the operators established that these were being clogged not by solids.
The High Flow pre-filters did capture all solids from the stream. The problem in this case were the
asphaltenes. These semi-solids did pass through the pre-filters into the coalescers and separators,
making them clog faster than they were supposed to.
Jonell Solution
As we were called in, we did not just quoted replacements for the elements currently in use, but we
focused on the problem here. Jonell tends to base any judgement on the first rule of filtration: the
contamination determines the method of filtration. Since semi-solids were clogging the high end
coalescers and separators, we felt the pre-filters need to be adjusted in such a way, that these filters
can take out the majority of not only the solids, but also these asphaltines.
If you are familiar with semi-solids you know they can deform easily when being under pressure. That
is why common filters cannot capture these. The asphaltines are simply being pushed through the
filters when differential pressure is being built up.
From our experience we know that two major things are important when dealing when semi-solids:
1. We need to create some depth in our filtermedia, so that the filters have the necessary
filter surface and built-up to hold on to this contamination, without losing performance on
filtering the regular solids out.
2. The change out of the pre-filters needs to be executed at a lower differtial pressure than
regular (8-10 psid instead of 16-18 psid) to avoid the semi-solids being deformed and
pushed through the filter media.
After doing some test it was decided that our elements with a double layered filter media was working
best. We combined a 10 and 2 micron filtering layer with supporting layers in between and pleated that
as our pleat pack for our LiquiPleat HF Series. The pre-filtering layer of 10 micron has been made
out of Polypropylene, whereas the final filtration layer of 2 micron was constructed out of Microglass
fibers. Together with an Viton O-ring on the end cap, we created a very sophisticated upgrade for the
existing high flow elements.
In practice tests showed that our elements could match the lifetime of the original elements even when
considering the lower recommend change out pressure.

In terms of TCO
Next to the fact that we solved the problem of the customer and with that their frustration of extra
maintenance and additional purchased for filter elements, we could make a relatively easy calculation
on how Jonell was performing on costs savings or TCO (Total Costs of Ownership):
Original situation (per train):
1. Exchanging 2 high flow elements every three weeks
2. Exchanging 1 liquid/liquid coalescer every six weeks
New situation (per train)
1. Exchanging 2 high flow elements every three weeks
2. Exchanging 1 liquid/liquid coalescer every t welve weeks
Calculation (per train on annual basis):
1. Savings on the coalescers/separators:
2. Savings on maintenance*:
Total savings per train per year:

6.400, 1.600, 8.000,-

* Maintenance savings based on employee costs alone. So, we left out the costs of stopping the process.

So, when considering 4 trains, Jonell managed to realize a costs saving of 32.000,- for this specific
process. And then the stopping of the actual process has not even been taken in to account.
To illustrate the building up of the differential pressures:
20
18

Pressure (psi)

16
14
12
10
High Flow

Coalescer

6
4
2
0
1 4 7 101316192225283134374043464952555861646770737679828588
Days