Air Filter Maintenance: Impact On Efficiency And Machinery Health

In an ideal world, would we not want to eliminate air filters altogether? What keeps us from achieving this is foreign material, detrimental to air, which moves rotating equipment; meanwhile, the process that receives the air sometimes cannot tolerate it. Now that we must live with the filter elements, let us look how improper maintenance can affect you.

In the realm of positive displacement machines, most filters do not require cleaning before they reach a pressure loss of approximately 20 inches of water column (“H₂0”). That is true for Aerzen filters as well. That is quite a bit of restriction for a filter element. Let us put this in perspective: if you have a house that has an air conditioning system, you also have these neat “furnace” and “AC” filters. Most of them will collapse when they are subjected to more than 40” H₂0 restriction, and your air flow really drops because the centrifugal fan cannot handle the restriction.

A positive displacement blower or screw compressor can easily deal with this inlet restriction. It will not affect the total air flow of the machine much, as the rotor lobes positively trap the air within the housing and the rotor lobes.