Dr. K. Sainath (PhD in Gas-Solid separation from IIT-Delhi) founded CLAIR CONSULTANTS PVT. LTD. with a vision to improve quality of pollution control equipment in order to render the process industries (particularly cement & steel) comply with new PM emission norms. Being a technocrat himself, he was involved in environmental audits, renovation of APC equipment and process enhancement of cement plants in India, Sudan, Ethiopia and other North African countries.

CLAIR ENGINEERS PVT. LTD. was established with a break-through Order that included design, manufacturing & supply of core cement production and pollution control equipment (on Turnkey basis) for the refurbishment of an old defunct cement plant to make it fully functional.

In 2007, we received a major order for air pollution equipment for a 4,000 TPD plant including Raw Mill / Kiln Bag House, Cooler ESP & auxiliary bag filters for a cement plant in South India. After successful execution of this order, many process pollution control equipment orders followed from same and other clients.

Besides greenfield jobs, we also took up retrofit assignments to convert ESP to Bag Filter at 3 cement plants – retrofit assignments were large, more complex than greenfield, and more importantly highly time-bound i.e. execution within the given shut-down period. This fine-tuned our project planning & commissioning capabilities, along with our technical experiences.

This year we successfully installed the first Bag Filter for Spent Wash Incineration application for a distillery boiler in sugar industry. The Flue Gas coming from this process is very complex in nature (due to its low bulk density, high acid content, moisture content & chlorides). Today, we are one of the only companies in India with this niche expertise and have largest market share in spent wash process bag filter application.

In 2009, we had a technology tie-up with Argus Fans, Canada, for design and manufacture of process & auxiliary ID fans of capacity ranging from 5000 m³/hour to 1.5 million m³/hour. Many large ID fans were exported to countries like Thailand, Kenya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Nepal etc. – as of today we have 680+ ID fan references with this technology.

We built a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Hyderabad, the largest pollution control equipment workshop in India with a built-in R&D unit. The facility is spread over 25,500 m²and has ample space of 6 more acres for future expansion.

From handling particulate matter, we stepped up to handle complex gaseous pollutants such as SOx, NOx, VOCs, heavy metals, deoxins & furans, acid Gases etc. We signed up for complete flue gas treatment & particulate pollution control for a W2E plant at Ghazipur, the first of its kind in India, using European technology & emission norms. This plant was commissioned in 2013 and has been in operation since then. The capacity of this plant is 500 Tons/Day (1 incinerator of 500 Tons/day consumption of RDF). On another FGD assignment, we provided a complete FGD system for a client in the petcoke industry.

We executed complete system order for flash dryer application, for drying of GGBS slag, fly ash, coffee spent etc. for clients such as ACC (Lafarge-Holcim India), Toshali Cements etc. with capacities ranging from 10 TPH to 50 TPH of raw material.

We also advanced into design, manufacture & supply of hybrid filters to achieve stringent emissions, simultaneously preserving a substantial portion of existing ESP structure for a power plant boiler. The hybrid filter is operating successfully since commissioning.

One more noteworthy technology advancement during this period was our installation of electrostatic tar precipitator for the graphite industry.

There was drastic increase in capacities of cement & steel plants, which necessitated pollution control systems to handle significantly large flue-gas volumes. With an intent to cater to such industry needs of tackling large gas volumes, we collaborated with an Italian techno-scientist to launch our product, the optiwave pulse-jet bag filter, that can efficiently handle high gas volumes (above 1 million m³/hour) with bag-lengths of more than 8 meters and up to 12 meters. This was achieved after due R&D at our manufacturing facility – today we are pioneers of long-bag technology that is useful for steel, cement, power, ferro-alloys and several other industries.

In 2014 we had our first Long-bag installations with 10 meter bag-length for Kiln Bag House & Cement Mill Bag House, which are running successfully till-date. The industry has embraced the long-bag technology since then, acknowledging its vital role in efficient bag cleaning (thus better bag life), reduced compressed air consumption, lower DP and many other advantages.

With an eye for technical detail enabling successful troubleshooting at a steel plant in Orissa, we successfully executed many steel process orders for pollution control equipment, along with structural engineering & design. Today we work with some of the major steel brands in India.

We signed our largest order (by value) for design, engineering, supply and erection of pollution control equipment along with ID fans for a steel company (on EPC basis) for their Raw Material Handling System (RMHS) unit.

During peak COVID-19, one of the projects that stands out is where we had supplied & commissioned a Raw Mill Kiln Bag House with ID fan for a cement plant in Telangana, India. This project warranted erection along with Civil Works in monsoon season in 6 days of shut-down (Hook-up system). The unique challenge was accepted and delivered by us in record 7 months from concept to commissioning and our client has high appreciation for this trend-setting project.

We received the order for design, manufacture and supply of bag filter, ID Fans & ducting for stock house de-dusting application (in a Steel Plant). This is the largest bag filter by volume (2.05 Million m³/h) that we designed till date.