Author(s)

R. Heidenreich, L. Patzig, A. Ränger, F. Gebler

Abstract

Non-ferrous metal production has a long tradition in the Saxon territory. When the mining of lead ore ceased in the region in the late 1960s, the lead smelting works in Freiberg/Saxony was extended to enable the smelting of secondary raw materials. The factory of Feinhütte Halsbrücke GmbH is specialized in the production of alloys of tin, lead and antimony. The Feinhütte Company is a small private enterprise; it has existed for more than 400 years now. With a turnover of 35 Mio Euro and trade connections to more than 20 countries in 3 continents Feinhütte Halsbrücke is a well-known and accepted producer of soldering products and more. But, the manufacturing process generates emissions of gas and dust with adhering heavy metals. The installed bag house filter meets the actual guideline of German emission control, but directive 2004/107/EC relating to arsenic, cadmium, mercury and nickel has given new limits for immission in ambient air. Driven by the intension of decreasing emission levels a new filter system was built as an additional filter after the existing filter system. It consists of a two-stage filter element in cartridge form with a pre-filter and agglomeration stage. The Hycoknit^® filter material used is characterized by a high loft layer of bonded in mesh fiber bundle at the inflow side and a finely porous thin fleece layer of turbulent fine fibers on the downstream side. The internal project monitoring program proved the new filter system. A reduction of the dust concentration to a maximum load of 1 mg /Nm ³ was reached. In addition, cadmium fine dust could be removed by nearly 100%.

Keywords

bag house filter, heavy metals, separation, emission, filter material