Industrial facilities install air filters for four significant reasons—complying with legislation, staying environmentally friendly, protecting their equipment, and ensuring workplace safety for their employees.
A recent workplace wellness study found that air quality at the workplace matters four times more than in amenities such as gym facilities. Fifty percent of workers surveyed said poor air quality makes them sleepier throughout the day, which lowers their productivity.
The four reasons mentioned above are essential, and we recommend you not overlook them. The most important one might be to ensure high air quality for your workers. You can improve air quality by installing the best industrial air filters in your factory or facility.
Most industrial air filtration systems come with stock filters, like baghouse and cartridge dust collectors. However, these can be expensive to replace, or they may not have the right filter media for your facility. Some industrial plants have specific requirements that industrial air filter manufacturers can’t address.
If you have special needs on your premises or want to cut costs, consider Robinson’s Filter Solutions for tailor-made custom industrial air filter solutions. If you don’t know what you need, schedule an onsite visit. Our specialized technicians will assess your facility and make specific recommendations.
Sourcing custom air filters isn’t an easy undertaking. Several factors come into play, and you should always consider them for the best results.
Below are seven factors to consider when ordering custom industrial air filters.
1. Meeting the Same Specifications as an Original Filter
A filter produced by a manufacturer is called an OEM filter or Original Equipment Manufacturer filter. Manufacturers make air filtration systems for use with their specific industrial air filter models.
Some of the best OEM filter manufacturers provided by Robinson’s Filter Solutions include Wheelabrator, Camfil Farr, Plymovent, Piovan, Donaldson Torit, Nordson, Oval Cartridges, Trumpf, and Diversitech.
On the other hand, custom industrial air filters are those made by independent providers like us for use in an existing industrial air filtration system.
We make a variety of cartridge filters that meet the specifications of the OEM filter in your system when you provide us with the part number or the specs of the filter.
Our custom industrial air filters come in all the necessary shapes and sizes. We ensure they will match or exceed your OEM filter’s capability but at a much better price.
When making a custom factory air filter, the manufacturer must strictly consider vital aspects such as MERV ratings, purification standards, and legislative compliance with the National Fire Protection Association and other bodies.
For example, an aftermarket filter can use higher Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values (MERV) ratings. If you run a welding facility, you’ll require a high-MERV air filter to trap gaseous pollutants.
The MERV ratings range between 1 and 20, with higher numbers indicating the increased efficiency of a filter to trap particulate matter measuring 0.3 to 10 microns.
Air filters rated MERV 13 to 20 are ideal for use in commercial setups to capture particles between 0.3 and 1 micron.
2. Cost of the Custom Air Filter
OEM filters are pretty expensive to buy and maintain. You may be wasting necessary company resources by purchasing and maintaining costly OEM air filters, which makes it essential to look for a cheaper alternative.
One good thing with custom industrial air filters is that they are cheaper than their OEM counterparts in both purchase and maintenance costs.
As custom industrial air filter experts, we make you a filter that costs only a fraction of the price of a brand-new filter.
We provide additional cleaning and refurbishment services for all of our custom filters. So, you will save money over time and on up-front costs.
We have observed over the years that our industrial air filter cleaning process is often 50% of the cost of a new air filter.
Depending on the type of filter, we may clean it using the 98% efficient McWinn dry cleaning process or the wet cleaning process that we have tested and proven for 25 years.
We can clean your air filter an average of 8 times (or, for some filters, up to 10 times) while maintaining cleaning efficiency levels of up to 98%.
3. Filter Durability
You’ll want to look at the durability of your custom industrial air filter in two ways. First, the filter lifespan must equal or exceed your OEM filters.
Second, your custom filter must maintain its functionality for the longest time possible. It’s not a durable filter if it only works great the first few months and loses efficiency, holding all other air filtration factors constant.
We provide tailor-made industrial air filter solutions. We are committed to ensuring your filters last longer and operate at the highest levels of efficiency possible.
We accomplish this through our onsite efficiency audit. Our filtration experts visit your facility, analyze your air filtration process, and recommend best practices to ensure optimum filter lifespan.
4. Reusability and Sustainability
Robinson’s Filter Solutions is committed to environmental sustainability and reducing pollution. We provide highly efficient custom filters that we can clean as many times as possible. That means you can have better air quality without wasting filters.
When we say our custom-size filters are washable 8-10 times, we mean that they are reusable 8-10 times before needing replacement. Maximizing reuse allows you to reduce your carbon footprint and preserve the environment.
5. Filter Size, Shape, and Form
Industrial air filters vary in size, shape, and form, depending on your equipment, the type of contaminants you want to filter, the location of your facility, the number of emission points, the location of emission points and required purification standards.
During our on-site visit, we will tour your facility and study the above aspects to determine your aftermarket air filter’s size, shape, or form.
For example, dust collectors like cartridge or baghouse filtration systems may have octagonal, cylindrical, triangular, hexagonal, and other shapes. Industrial air compressor air filters will differ in size and shape from custom HVAC air filters.
6. Types of Air Contaminants to Filter
The custom air filter you obtain must be the most suitable for the type of air pollutant you want to filter.
For example, a welding facility requires filters to capture gaseous pollutants, so its air filter must differ from a grain facility that needs to capture fine dust particles.
The volume of contaminants also matters. A small output in a small welding facility will require a smaller filter than a large grain processing factory with a massive production of grain dust.
The manufacturer must also consider the physical characteristics of the pollutants to be filtered.
Your facility might be producing explosive or combustible dust, heavy dust, light dust, dry dust, or even moist dust. The filter must be ideal for capturing the specific dust or pollutants you’re producing.
7. Type of Filter Media
The type of filter media is another crucial consideration when making custom industrial air filters. If the manufactured product you choose doesn’t make filters with your required media type, you may need our custom solution.
Depending on your specific application, you can order your tailored air filter with the following common types of industry-standard filter media:
- Spunbond
Spunbond filter media are known for being durable. They are the standard option for internal polyester filter media used in cartridge filters.
- Fire Retardant Nanofiber (FR)
High-temperature machines require nanofiber filtration media made with fire-retardant materials.
- Mesh Screen or Wire Mesh
Machines that rely on electrostatic control require wire mesh filtration media.
- 85/15 Cellulose
Many dust collection filters contain this type of paper filtration media.
Final Words
There you have it—seven factors you must consider for your custom industrial air filters to ensure you use the correct filter for your facility’s air filtration needs.
At Robinson’s Filter Solutions, we can customize industrial air filters for you that are highly efficient, durable, and even cheaper than OEM filters. Let us assess your filtration needs and give you a cost-effective quote today!
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