Where filtration counts Bekaert

WHERE WHERE FILTRATION FILTRATION COUNTS COUNTS

Bekaert (www.bekaert.com) is a global technological and market leader in advanced solutions based on metal transformation and coatings, and the world’s largest independent manufacturer of drawn steel wire products. Joseph Altham spoke to Sebastien Heymans, Bekaert’s global product market manager for filtration, to find out about some of the industries where filtration plays a vital role.

Bekaert (Euronext Brussels: BEKB) is a global company with headquarters in Belgium, employing 28,000 people worldwide. Serving customers in 120 countries, Bekaert pursues sustainable profitable growth in all its activities and generated €4.5 billion combined sales in 2010.

Bekaert works with many different industries and produces wires for every purpose from tyre cord to champagne corks. Bekaert began its life in 1880 as a manufacturer of barbed wire, and to this day it still makes barbed wire for agricultural purposes. However, over time it found more and more applications for wire across different industry sectors and gradually built up a global business. If metal wires remain Bekaert’s core competence, the uses it has found for wire are almost endless, and filtration is only one of many fields where the company is active.

“Bekaert got into filtration by making finer and finer wires,” Mr Heymans explained. “Eventually the company moved into making fibres and developed the sintered stainless steel fibre media that are used in filtration. Bekaert’s filtration business can be divided into the design and production of sintered metal fibre filtration media and of stainless steel filter elements and systems.”

Textiles and plastics

Bekaert’s filtration media and systems serve an important purpose in the industries requiring polymers.

“Polymer is our biggest and oldest sector. Some polymers are very sensitive in terms of the creation of gels. Gels are polymer particulates that are made during the polymerisation reaction but that have cross-linked chains and so a different viscosity.”

In the resin production (or polymerisation lines) several steps of filtration are required from filtration of the raw material to final melt polymer filtration after finisher for final dirt filtration and gel removal.

In the textile industry, more specifically in the manufacture of synthetic fibres, filtration is needed to remove particles of dirt and retain gels. “When you spin and draw fine

fibres, you cannot afford dirt or gel particles, which would create a break in the yarn.”

Bekaert is also a leading supplier of filtration elements and systems for the plastic film industry, where filtration is required to produce synthetic films. Here gels are unwanted because they create a fish-eye effect which has a negative impact on product quality, especially in the increasing market of optical film for flat screens or photovoltaic industry.”

Bekaert supplies most of the specialist manufacturers of PET (mainly BOPET (biaxially oriented polyethylene terephthalate) film as well as of PP (including CPP (Cast polypropylene film) and BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) for the packaging industry.

Improvements in filtration generate significant environmental benefits. “Standards of filtration are improving, and the environment is a driver in our product development. For example, if you want to reduce the weight of polyester in plastic bottles, there are filtration requirements you have to meet in order to get there.” Petrochemicals and automotive

In the petrochemical industry, Bekaert’s filtration elements and systems are used to cleanse process gases and for emission control. Hot gas filtration makes it possible to purify process gases by removing dust particles and contaminants from a gas stream even where the process occurs at a high temperature.

Mr Heymans explains: “Hot gas filtration may be required within the petrochemical process when you want to retain the catalyst for reuse. Hot gas filtration is also needed at

the end of a process, before the gas can be released into the atmosphere. Here, removing the dust particles is necessary in order to reduce the environmental impact. Previously, if you wanted to do that, the gas had to be cooled down first, but filtering at high temperatures allows you to recover energy. We design and sell complete solutions for these processes. The application range is fairly wide and includes refineries, cement industry, metallurgical process furnaces, gasification process, nuclear and many others. We use very fine stainless steel alloys that are specific to the application, which helps us to design solutions for the different gases.”

In the motor industry, makers of diesel trucks use Bekaert’s diesel particulate filtration technology in exhaust systems. “We produce the filtration media and a systems integrator delivers the final solution. The particulate filter captures the black soot from the exhaust. In this way the environmental impact is reduced.”

The BRICs

Bekaert as a whole is firmly established in the emerging economies, which it entered at an early stage. Like the rest of the business, the filtration unit has made the BRICs a priority. “In Brazil, we opened a sales office for filtration two years ago in São Paolo. Business is expanding in Russia, and in India we started a production plant in 2007. In China, we have had a factory since 2005 at Suzhou.”

Mr Heymans says that Bekaert’s filtration systems are proving particularly successful in the BRICs for textile and packaging applications. “In China there has been a fantastic growth in polyester products. Whereas 10 years ago China accounted for 20 per cent of the world’s polyester production, China produces around 70 per cent of the world’s polyester today.”

Being established in the BRICs is important to Bekaert so that it can work closely with its customers. The company even has a research and development centre in China at Jiangyin. “We want to be partners with our customers and we move with our markets. In research and development, we have a strong team of engineers who understand what our customers want to achieve.” n

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