Self-cleaning screen saves rendering facility $100,000 pa

A Queensland meat rendering facility had an ongoing issue involving replacing prefilter cartridges in its reverse osmosis (RO) plant. During periods of high sediment loadings in the feed water supply to the RO plant, the prefilter cartridges were needing to be replaced on a daily basis.

Southland Filtration proposed the installation of a SKAN Autofine AF3-80 automatic self-cleaning screen filter with a 6 µm screen prior to the RO prefilters, which would decrease the dirt load reaching the cartridges. The results were instantaneous.

The cartridge life span has been increased 10 times, delivering huge cost savings in consumable expenditure plus more run time for the RO plant. This has resulted in greater efficiencies in production output.

The rendering plant’s site process engineer explained that after the SKAN filter was installed, the cartridge filters now only need replacing every one and a half weeks to a fortnight, rather than daily.

“The outcome has been fantastic, with more uptime on the plant and a payback period of six months. The trial has been so successful we will now be installing an additional 1 µm screen filter to negate the need for the 5 µm cartridge filters in the RO plant and further reduce the frequency of changing filters.”

The installation of the screen has delivered potential cost savings of over $100,000 per annum to the meat byproducts rendering facility.