Development of a New Air Cleaner Filter

A recent trend in the auto industry has been an increasing focus on the environment, which demands that product designs be “eco-friendly”. For this it is important to design products that can be easily disassembled or formed of combustible materials. Accordingly, forming parts using a single kind of recyclable material is the most effective way to satisfy the above-described requirement. We therefore took this approach with the development of an air cleaner filter. While a conventional air cleaner filter for an engine is generally composed of three parts, that is, filter medium, sealing material, and frame, we developed a recyclable air cleaner filter formed only of the filter medium. To do so, however, it was critical that both sealability and durability of the filter medium be maintained. In order to achieve this, a thermoplastic non-woven fabric was used to produce the filter. We constructed a flange to be durable by compressing the outer periphery of the filter to a high density, and succeeded in obtaining sufficient sealability by compressing the outermost peripheral portion of the flange to a low density. This makes it possible not only to produce the filter medium using only the thermoplastic non-woven fabric, but also to reduce its weight compared with the conventional filter. The newly developed filter is thus called the “Full Fabric Air Filter”.