Menardi - Improved Tubesheet Design

Intended for electric arc furnace dust collectors, Menardi has designed and supplied an alternate tubesheet to the traditional method of clamping the filters to a metal thimble.

Traditional tubesheet designs can be prone to product accumulation problems. For example, thimbles utilize screw-clamps for attachment, and often the clamp or the tools used for installation are dropped into the hopper later causing problems with the hopper evacuation equipment (screw conveyors, usually). More importantly, with the increase in tons-per-hour (TPH), many steel mills have installed "peak shaving" water atomizers, or other types of evaporation cooling, in the exhaust duct to control baghouse temperatures. The resultant problems with the pollution control equipment often causes severe capacity difficulties and lack of sufficient evacuation of the melt shop. The most prominent of these problems is an accumulation of solidified furnace dust inside the thimble.

This accumulation of furnace dust builds inside of the thimble to the point of choking off the air flow to the filters, often obstructing the inside diameter of a tube to much smaller opening. Of course, this prevents air flow from being properly distributed, and more critically, prevents the cleaning of the filters. The reverse-flow cleaned filters shed the dust cake, but the accumulated dust cannot flow into the hoppers.

The tubesheets designed and provided by Menardi eliminate these problems. The filters are directly attached to the tubesheet without the use of clamps and thimbles. Thousands of active filters have been put into service utilizing this design. Available for retrofits into "problem" baghouses or as original equipment, this custom-engineered tubesheet can prevent or solve the "choking" problems caused by evaporative cooling of furnace gases.

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