Dr. Thomas Caesar
Vice President, Freudenberg Filtration Technologies, Germany
Dr. Thomas Caesar is a renowned air filtration expert with almost 25 years of experience in the global filtration industry. He received a diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Karlsruhe and his doctorate degree in thermodynamics and fluid dynamics from the University of Aachen (RWTH). Since 1999, Dr. Caesar has been employed by Freudenberg Filtration Technologies, a globally leading manufacturer of filtration solutions, where he has held various positions in sales and engineering. As Vice President Global Filter Engineering Industrial, he is currently responsible for the global technical product management and filter engineering in industrial filtration. Dr. Caesar is actively contributing to industry guidelines at VDI, VDMA, and Eurovent. He co-authors various European standards at CEN and international standards at ISO. In ISO, he serves as Convenor of WG12 “Sustainability” and was as project leader of part 1, intensely involved in the development of ISO 16890. Dr. Caesar is Chairman of the Product Committee “Air Filters” at Eurovent Certita Certification and Vice Chairman of the Product Group “Air Filter” at Eurovent Association.
Dec 5, 2023, 8:25 AM-8:40AM EST
Latest Advancements of Clean Air Standards and Emerging Opportunities
Air filters clean the air that enters a building or the air that exits a building or process, protecting people and the environment. Therefore, the whole purpose of using a filter is to create sustainability. However, this also comes with the burden of the footprint of the filter itself during manufacturing, use and disposal. In the use phase, besides cleaning the air, it generates energy consumption of the ventilation system that moves the air through the filter. The energy consumption associated with an air filter is proportional to its pressure drop and depends on various operating parameters. It is not constant during the use phase varies with the air flow rate, humidity and the dust load of the filter. To select the right type of filter for a given application, the user needs to get reliable data to compare filters one by one and at the same time wants to assess the performance of a specific filter in his application. Both tasks cannot be accomplished at the same time. To compare filters one to another, they must be tested with the same fixed set of parameters, such as volume flow, fan efficiency, amount of dust loading, etc. This results in data sets per filter that allow different filters to be compared, but are not directly related to the actual application. On the other hand, to evaluate the performance of a filter in a given application, it must be tested with the same operating parameters as in the application. In this case, comparison with other filters tested under different conditions is not possible. To address this dilemma, Eurovent has defined a set of guidelines that either allow the filter comparison needed also for an energy efficiency rating system, or allow the assessment of the filter performance for a given application.