Hot-gas filter manufacturing assessments: Volume 5. Final report, April 15, 1997

The development of advanced filtration media for advanced fossil-fueled power generating systems is a critical step in meeting the performance and emissions requirements for these systems. While porous metal and ceramic candle-filters have been available for some time, the next generation of filters will include ceramic-matrix composites (CMCs), intermetallic alloys, and alternate filter geometries. The goal of this effort was to perform a cursory review of the manufacturing processes used by 5 companies developing advanced filters from the perspective of process repeatability and the ability for their processes to be scale-up to production volumes. It was found that all of the filter manufacturers had a solid understanding of the product development path. Given that these filters are largely developmental, significant additional work is necessary to understand the process-performance relationships and projecting manufacturing costs. While each organization had specific needs, some common among all of the filter manufacturers were access to performance testing of the filters to aide process/product development, a better understanding of the stresses the filters will see in service for use in structural design of the components, and a strong process sensitivity study to allow optimization of processing