Process Improvement for Fragrance Manufacturer with Steri Funda

Summary

A fragrance manufacturer was frustrated with their old filtration process that used an unreliable porous stainless-steel filter that collected catalysts inside porous metal tubes. The tubes would constantly clog with fines – resulting in downtime, inconsistencies, and off-site chemical cleaning.

Steri worked closely with their process engineers to understand the production process. The solution was to use an appropriately sized Steri Funda filter for their application. Since the installation of the Steri Funda filter, the fragrance manufacturer has been extremely pleased with their investment bringing consistency and reliability to the process.

Problems in a Process

A New Jersey fragrance manufacturer was frustrated with a bottleneck in production due to inconsistencies in their filtration process and were looking for a more reliable filtration solution. The manufacturer’s process consisted of hydrogenation using Rhodium on Alumina and Palladium on Carbon catalysts.

In the manufacturer’s current setup, they used a porous stainless-steel backwash filter similar to a Candle filter, but with a few differences. The filter elements pointed upward, and filtration flowed from the inside outward of the filter elements. The filters would collect catalysts on the inside of the tubes allowing the filtrate to pass through. Due to the tortuous filtration flow path, over time and use, the filter media clogged with fines and needed to be physically removed from service and sent out for chemical cleaning.