Increasing renewable fuel production

One of Amafilter’s® customers collects and recycles leftover food from hotels and the retail trade, which would normally be sent to landfill or be simply thrown away.
A key component of Amafilter’s filtration process is to filter and separate the solids and the PE from the fat contained in the leftover food.
The customer needed to achieve less than 50 ppm in order to produce high-quality renewable fuel to power their truck transportation network. The company carried out pilot tests using a pressure leaf filter system, but it concluded that this was not an effective filtration solution for this application as it led to problems during cake discharge.
Technology
The main issue was that the PE particles caused the filter cake to stick together, leading to inefficient fat separation, an increase in overall production time and frequent cleaning interventions. The Amafilter team decided that the Cricketfilter technology would be the ideal filtration solution and proceeded with a pilot test, which brought excellent results.
The Cricketfilter backpulse function located at the bottom of the filter elements redirects the air upwards to uniformly inflate the filter bags, effectively ensuring maximum filter cake discharge. A system with a back pulsing mechanism was installed at the customer’s plant, resulting in a significant increase in production time as equipment and process breakdowns were no longer occuring.
The installation of the Cricketfilter led to the customer achieving a PE of 33 ppm, an excellent result which met the customer’s objective of achieving less than 50 ppm, enabling them to produce a high-quality of renewable fuel.
They are now efficiently separating the fat and PE from leftover food to produce high-quality renewable fuel for their own transport fleet.
This has not only substantially reduced truck operational costs, but it has also contributed towards the company’s sustainability objectives. In addition, they are selling any extra renewable fuel they produce to other businesses, creating an additional source of profitable income from the improved operational process.
Having experienced the benefits the Cricketfilter brought to their plant, they purchased another two systems for another facility they operate in east Germany.
For more information: Visit: amafiltration.com and jonellsystems.com