ERS CCM® Filter System

Most dust collectors are bought to replace one that is causing a problem. Compressed air that has to be plumbed and dried. Media that blinds and takes the airflow with it. A cleaning cycle that means stopping the line. The CCM^® OCT filter is built so none of those three apply, and Engineered Recycling Systems designs, builds and supports it from Atlanta.

Dust collection without compressed air

A pulse-jet collector cleans its media with blasts of compressed air. That means a compressor, an air dryer, a receiver and the pipework to carry it, all of which have to be sized, installed, powered and maintained — before the filter has removed a single pound of dust.

The CCM^® OCT cleans by vacuum instead. Traversing suction nozzles draw the dust off the media from the clean side, which removes compressed air from the installation entirely. One utility fewer to supply and one fewer to go wrong.

If you are replacing a baghouse or cartridge filter

The usual complaint is not that the filter failed. It is that the airflow fell away over months, the pressure drop climbed, the fan worked harder to pull the same volume, and the pick-up at the machine got weaker without anyone deciding it should.

That happens because a filter cleaned on a cycle recovers less each time. One cleaned continuously does not accumulate the same way, which is why pressure drop stays low and airflow stays where it was commissioned.

Cleaning while the line keeps running

Nothing stops for the filter to be cleaned. The nozzles work continuously while the system is in service, so there is no cleaning cycle to schedule around production and no reason to shut a line to recover airflow.

On a continuous operation that is the difference between a filter that fits the plant and one the plant has to fit around.

Media changes in minutes, without tools

A panel change takes two or three people about four to six minutes per panel and needs no tools. Open the ratchet straps and the zipper, draw the old panel out through the C-rail slot, feed the new one into both rails, pull it round by its sewn loops, close the zipper and tighten the straps.

On a plant that cannot give up much maintenance time, that is the number worth comparing against whatever the current filter takes.

Energy and makeup air

Stable pressure drop is an energy question before it is a performance one. The fan is the largest electrical load in a dust collection installation, and a fan pulling against a loaded filter draws more for less airflow every hour the plant runs.

Filtered air can also be returned to the building rather than exhausted, which in a heated plant is makeup air that does not have to be conditioned again.

Modular and scalable

One segment per media panel, so the machine is sized to the air volume rather than chosen from three fixed options. A 25/15 is one segment, a 25/75 is five, and the sizes in between follow the same pattern.

That matters on a retrofit. A filter that can be specified at the size the duty needs will fit a building that a standard range would not.

Where it goes in

Corrugated box plants, tissue and paper production, converting lines and scrap systems. A CCM^® OCT is always installed under a roof, usually on a mezzanine or platform near the balers, shredders and the balancing fan, at the end of long duct runs.

In front of it a cyclone separator or a low profile separator takes out the coarse fraction, and the trim removal system handles the scrap before any of it reaches the air. On the converting side that is dust collection for paper converting and tissue and hygiene production; on the metals side it is part of metals processing.

It is patented

The machine carries its patent numbers on the nameplate: US 11,376,540 B2 and US 11,865,486 B2, with CA 3,058,422 and CA 3,125,019 in Canada. The numbers are checkable, which is a different kind of claim from a description.

Specified as part of a system

A filter is only as good as the air reaching it. ERS designs the hoods at the machine, the ducting, the separation, the filtration and the fans together as one dust collection system, rather than supplying a filter into somebody else's design and hoping the airflow suits it.

How the cleaning actually works

A single gear motor sits on the central shaft at the back wall and turns the whole boom — the central guide tube, the carriages, the nozzle arms, the nozzles, the hoses and the scrapers. That rotation is the only powered motion in the machine.

The nozzle traverse takes its motion from that rotation and has no motor of its own. Two red round belts sit on a fixed collar on the back wall and never turn. The cross grooved shaft rides round with the boom, so its pulley rolls around the stationary belts like a planet gear, and that turns the shaft. A guide pin sits in the crossed grooves: the turning shaft pushes the pin, and the pin moves the carriages and the nozzles from one end to the other.

The two grooves cross and join at both ends of the shaft, so when the pin reaches one end it runs into the opposite groove and comes back. The shaft always turns the same way. There is no switch, no sensor and no reversing motor. Rotation plus traverse means the nozzles spiral across the whole media surface and vacuum it clean while the filter keeps working.

Scrapers turn with the boom on every intermediate ring and wipe dust and fiber off the rings back onto the media, where the nozzles collect it. Suction runs from each nozzle tip through a spiral hose into a rubber cup on the central tube and out to the dust transport fan.

One motor, and it sits outside the dust

The gear motor is mounted on the outside of the back wall, in clean air. Inside the drum there is no motor, no electrics and no compressed air — the traverse is purely mechanical, driven by the fixed belts, the cross grooved shaft and the guide pin.

The motor itself is rated for the duty: Class II Division 2, Groups F and G, T3B. That is the specific rating a combustible dust environment calls for, rather than a general assurance about safety.

Inside-to-outside airflow

Dirty air enters through one of the four service openings — two in each end wall, upper and lower — and passes outward through white filter media panels stretched between galvanized C-rail rings. The dust stays inside the drum. Every opening ships with a cover, and on site the cover comes off wherever the duct is actually attached, which is what lets one machine suit different layouts.

Working on the pressure side rather than under suction is also what underpins the approach to combustible dust filtration, set out separately with the standards it is assessed against.

What is standard on every unit

A vibration sensor on the dust fan, a pressure transmitter across the media, a grounding brush, an anti-static clip and a rotation sensor. Internals are antistatic and grounded, the suction nozzles and hoses included, so static cannot build and discharge inside the dust cloud.

Inspection and wear

Operators look into the drum through round inspection windows in the end walls, with a knob-driven wiper to clear the glass, so the media can be seen while the machine runs.

Because only the cleaning mechanism moves, the wear list is short and predictable: the media, the nozzle tips and hoses, the red belts and their connecting pins, the guide pin, and the bellows that keep dust off the cross grooved shaft. ERS holds those in Atlanta — see spare parts and service.

How a project starts

With your dust, your air volume, your building and what your current collector is costing you to run — in compressed air, in energy, and in the time it takes to clean. Material can be run at the ERS test facility in Atlanta where a question is better settled than estimated.

Every system ERS supplies is installed, commissioned and supported by ERS, with parts held in Atlanta. Talk to ERS about your dust load and what your current filter is costing you to run.