CUSTOMER
During the past ten years Audi has expanded their production in Hungary significantly, doubling their original production
capacity. Today they are one of Hungary’s most significant foreign direct investors and exporters and the plant is the largest passenger car engine plant in the world. Around 9.000 engines are manufactured every day for the whole Volkswagen Group and some of the Audi car models are also assembled here.
PROBLEM / OBJECTIVE
The machines in the factory were equipped with various filter models and technologies, providing different quality of filtered air which was not recovered. 1 000 000 m3/h of process air from the filters were let out of the premises through the roof. The inconsistent air quality in combination with a general ventilation running at maximum capacity resulted in high energy costs, decaying buildings and oily rooftops. The main reasons for choosing Absolent was energy savings, low maintenance costs and cleaner air. The Volkswagen Corporation has a global program to decrease their plants’ energy consumption worldwide by 20% by 2020, and the well-filtered process air is a significant part of this.
SOLUTION
Most of our filters are working with “Minimal Quantity Lubrication” (MQL), which is one of the latest lube technologies within metalworking. It creates special demands for process air filtration, due to very small particle sizes. The Absolent A•smoke series are designed to cope with this problem. In this case, our solution was best due to our three guarantees:
1) Absolent filters are equipped with HEPA H13 cassettes for perfect air quality in combination with 2) at least one year of maintenance free operation and 3) stable extraction of air during the entire operation.
Besides filters for MQL also filters from A•dust series were installed for dry filtration, as well A•mist series for “light” applications such as washing machines.
RESULTS
Absolent together with our hungarian distributor Pure Air have installed 27 different types of both large central filters and small individual filters over the past three years and Audi is very happy with the results. Maintenance costs are very low; the first time a filter cassette had to be exchanged in an A•mist10C it had been running for more than 12 700 hours!
Some of the air filtered through the HEPA H13 is now being returned back to the premises. The filter capacity ensure constant, proper extraction from the machines, which means no leakage of dirty air! In 2017 we started a project that included measuring air quality improvements and savings made with Absolent.