Africa's largest electricity supplier ESKOM has, for the first time, installed a flue gas filter system with filter bags produced from Nexylene PPS staple fibers in a coal-fired power station in South Africa. Nexylene PPS staple fibers are based on Ticona's Fortron PPS.
The new PPS staple fibers, with fineness values of 1.3 and 2.0 dtex, enable the production of filter bags with excellent filter efficiency and long service life. The filter bags also satisfy the requirements of environmental legislation. There are some 50 000 coal-fired power stations worldwide and new plants are planned.
This increasing demand represents enormous potential for PPS. The same applies to refuse incineration plants, combined heat and power stations and cement factories, where dust, heavy metals and other particulates also need to be effectively reduced.
In the flue gas cleaning unit of ESKOM´s “Hendrina Power Station”, some 8000 filter bags based on Fortron PPS are in service. They measure 12.7 cm in diameter and a good 8.095 m in length. The staple fibers for the needlefelt were supplied by Nexis Fibers. The Fortron-based Nexylene fibers have a fineness of 1.3 and 2.0 dtex (1 decitex = weight of a fiber 10 000 m long in grams).
At the present time, the annual capacity of the Hendrina Power Station is about 2000 MW. The new filter bags were installed by Bateman Howden South Africa. The common objective of Bateman Howden and ESKOM was to comply with the emission regulations as efficiently as possible.