High-Speed Stereoscopic Fragment Tracking in Industrial Filter Cleaning

Dust filtration is a critical operation in industrial processes, especially for environmental gas cleaning. Thereby, contaminated gas is passed through a fabric that holds back solid particles. Over time, these particles form a compact layer on the fabric surface further denoted as filter cake. This filter cake is periodically cleaned off via reverse air jet pulses, which cause an explosive breakup of the cake. To gather insights on the mechanics of this breakup, a high-speed, contactless 3D-monitoring method is presented and evaluated on laboratory scale. Results show that, despite the untextured appearance of
the filter cake, for the first time a continuous three-dimensional evaluation of the filter cake motion is made possible. From our experiments, a novel data set is provided which will allow the derivation of mechanical parameters for filter cake fragments and allow the implementation and validation of dynamic simulations further on.