Valin Expertise Save Refinery $85K in Filter Replacements

Challenge


While reviewing accounts, one of Valin’s regional sales managers noticed that a refinery customer had been consistently increasing purchases of filters and housing units for a reactor feed application. In speaking with the engineers, he found out about a major issue they were having with the filters. They showed pictures where the filters were prematurely blinding due to large particulate and when investigating the source of the contaminate, we found they had a pre-filter feeding the main filter housing. The pre-filter was designed to remove contaminate from 0.7 micron to 10 microns. It became obvious that the pre-filter was not working; in fact, it had only worked 2 months within the past 5 years. Each filtration bundle costs the customer around $31,000 and they had 3 that they had purchased over the last several years.

Solution


When the latest round of replacement filters arrived, Valin’s filtration specialists asked if he could observe the change-out procedure. He noticed during the installation that the refinery technicians were installing the filters backwards. After resolving the issue, the filters operated correctly and have had no issues since.  Valin also recommended having the old filter bundles cleaned versus replacing them to reduce the cost. We coordinated the effort and worked with several approved filtration cleaning vendors.

Customer Benefits


Valin was able to solve a very costly problem that the refinery had been having over the past 5 years. By assessing their system and installation procedures our team was able to quickly identify the issue and rectify the situation. We also offered them an alternative to replacing the old filters and saved them around $85K.