NEWS RELEASE                                                                                         October 2018

Fabric  Filter Market, Competitor Shares, IIoT, and TCO are Inseparable

There is no set of government or association statistics which provides fabric filter media and element sales let alone future projections. The building blocks to reasonable analysis are knowledge of the processes, knowledge of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of filters for each process, and the aggregation of sales by the individual participants. There is further iteration by comparing the sales of media to the sales of the elements and to the inventory of installed filters.

One venue with insights on market share and total cost of ownership was The Filtration 2018 conference and exhibition last week in Philadelphia. The key note address was by Michael Meis, Lead Research Specialist, 3M who described the use of a blue tooth enabled pressure sensor on each Filtrete furnace filter. An automatic purchasing program entails tracking of pressure by 3M and delivery of new filters when needed. The result is direct marketing and elimination of distribution discounts. The average fabric filter bag costs five times as much as the average furnace filter. So you can expect to see remote bag monitoring sooner rather than later.

When a company such as Arcelor Mittal which has centralized purchasing and buys based on total cost of ownership is remotely monitoring and analyzing the  ownership cost of every bag, the sales environment will change significantly.

Filtration is an annual conference alternating between Philadelphia and Chicago. (it was just announced that the schedule is now being changed to every 18 months in Chicago).  The event  features presentations and exhibitions by filter media suppliers as well as companies selling components. There was a large display of filter fibers and media. The filter element suppliers are visitors. Ten of the media exhibitors focused on dust collection. The distinction between HVAC media and dust collector media is that one handles light dust loads of ambient air while the other handles heavy dust loads and therefore requires cleaning of the media.

Bondex, an Andrew Industries company,  introduced Hydrolox®, a new technology to the industrial filtration market. It is produced from a unique process technology designed for better  filtration performance and lower operating costs. This product is currently in operation in power utilities, agricultural, cement, mining, and asphalt filtration applications.

Lydall is a major supplier of non-woven media for fabric filters.

Nitto displayed dust collector media composed of various base materials such as woven fabrics and felt laminated with PTFE in a 2-layer structure; used in filter bags for high collection efficiency at factories and incineration facilities.

NXTNANO nMAX medias feature a gradient density & diameter nanofiber matrix which can deliver dust holding capacity in excess of 300% greater than standard nanofiber with no appreciable change in pressure drop. With their proprietary HYPR Spinning process NXTNANO produces nMAX in a single pass and can incorporate the technology on to most nonwoven medias used today including: Cellulose, Cellulose/Poly Blends, Spunbonds, Wetlaid Synthetics, Hydro-Entangled, and Felted Medias. nMAX can be employed in pulsed filtration applications while maintaining excellent dust release properties

Shanghai Lingqiao Environmental  HEPA  displayed a HEPA class pulsable high efficiency PTFE media specially designed for tough applications including plasma cutting, laser cutting, heavy dust loading, pharmaceuticals and industrial welding.

The world fabric media market in 2019 will be $1.8 billion.  The power industry and specifically coal fired generating companies will be the top purchasers.

More details on the media, elements, filters and systems are found at: N021 World Fabric Filter and Element Market

Bob McIlvaine can answer your questions at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 847 784 0012 ext. 112