Hydraulic Filtration and the Technology S Curve

摘要

Filtration is critical to sustain life, we depend on filtration systems every day for the air we breathe and the water we drink. Filtration or Contaminant removal is also vital to ensure efficient and reliable production of most modern technology systems. Some common examples include: filtration of rinse water to increase production yields in integrated circuit processing, roller and journal bearing lubricant filtration to increase uptime and reduce equipment failure in heavy industries such as steel-making, and compressed air filtration for reliability and accuracy in robotic applications.rnFiltration is also a vital part of a hydraulic system as research still suggests that over 75% of all hydraulic component failures can be traced back to some form of contamination. The advancement and optimization of hydraulic system components and technologies has provided users of hydraulic systems with more accuracy and efficiency in a condensed package. This new hydraulic technology which utilizes increased pump efficiencies, higher operating pressure, and decreased fluid volumes relative to system flow rates has also increased the demands on hydraulic filter systems. New trends in hydraulics suggest compact, efficient and reliable fluid power is now talked about and part of research at the university level. This will no doubt spur more development that will yield higher performing filtration materials and systems. This paper provides a brief history of filtration, the state of current hydraulic filtration performance in relation to the technology S curve, and also includes a discussion of technology forecasting of incremental innovation and possible next generation trends of hydraulic filtration related to hydraulic systems.