45 Percent of the Macro Liquid Filtration Market is in Asia

One of the biggest drivers will be the construction of sewage treatment plants in China. In the just completed eleventh five-year plan (2006-2010), China doubled its secondary sewage treatment capacity. This pace will continue through the twelfth five-year plan. Much of the sludge dewatering is being accomplished by belt filter presses. The Asian market for belt filter presses will be just under $300 million in 2011.

Granular media filters are the largest equipment segment in liquid macro filtration. They are used to purify surface water to provide municipal drinking water. Throughout Asia there is a major effort to provide safe water to all citizens.

Recessed chamber filter presses are widely used in the chemical and mining industries. Asia leads the world in the purchases of this type of filter. Bag filters are used in chemical and metal working industries. They are also used for the purification of produced water in oil and gas extraction. This is a big market for filter media. The replacement bag market in Asia will be over $200 million in 2011.

A fast growing segment of liquid macro filtration is the automatic backwashing filter. This filter uses screens or disks and is replacing bag filters in some applications. It also competes with liquid cartridges (not considered part of macro filtration). These backwashing filters are used in irrigation, metal working and many other applications.

Also included in macro filtration are drum and disk filters used in mining applications. Leaf filters are used along with diatomaceous earth to filter beverages. Gravity belt filters are used to filter chemicals and also gypsum crystals. China is buying more belt filters for power plant scrubber gypsum dewatering than the rest of the world combined.