Process water for nonwoven processing

 

In the manufacture of nonwoven products, a spunlace process (water jet bonding or turbulence of the fiber material) is used. Using this technology, fibers or filaments of unbonded nonwovens are swirled together, intertwined and thereby bonded by means of high-pressure water jets emerging from nozzles. The original non-woven fabrics have high strength and softness. The quality of the process water plays a crucial role in this process. Its composition influences the service life of various machine parts and the jet strips.

Two AZUD HELIX Automatic systems with compressed air-supported backwashing 212AA with a filter fineness of 20 μm were put into operation at a well-known medical care company.

 

This results in both economic and process-related advantages for the customer:

• The backwash water consumption could be reduced by more than 50% compared to the previously used automatic backwash filters.
• Manual cleaning or replacement of downstream bag filters can now be largely eliminated.
• The bag filters were only used as safety filters. Blocking of the filters does not occur.
• The non-woven machines using the spunlace process work trouble-free. The cleaning intervals could be increased from 3 days to 7 days.
• The high-pressure pumps (40 bar) tolerate the filtered water well. There are no negative effects.

The significantly reduced water consumption of 8 m3/d instead of 19 m3/d alone brings the company savings of 13,500 € per system and year (at a price of 4.50€/m3 for city water supply and disposal). The customer sees the even greater savings effects in the higher process reliability, uninterrupted production and the significantly reduced maintenance effort of the entire production process.