Draft:Bokela

Bokela GmbH (stylized BOKELA) is a German GmbH private company founded in 1986 as a university spin-off from the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). The company specializes in filtration systems for solid-liquid separation. The company is based in Karlsruhe, operates internationally, and has won several innovation awards for its work. Bokela is part of the Japanese group of companies Tsukishima Holdings Co., Ltd. and has a subsidiary in Australia.

History
Bokela was founded on December 15, 1986 as “BOKELA Ingenieurgesellschaft für Mechanische Verfahrenstechnik mbH” (BOKELA Engineering Company for Mechanical Process Technology) by Reinhard Bott, Robert Kern, and Thomas Langeloh (Bo-Ke-La), who all graduated from the University of Karlsruhe (known today as KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). Until the early 1990s, the start-up mainly focused on auditing and optimizing filter systems and advising operators of such systems. The detailed insights gained into operating problems and bottlenecks in conventional filtration technologies provided the company with the basis for developing new problem-solving approaches and innovations with its own filter systems and technologies from the mid-1990s onwards.

As early as 1985, the three future founders were awarded a prize in the start-up competition “Become self-employed” of German business magazine Capital with their idea for the “production of apparatus for solid-liquid separation”.

The collaboration with the Institute for Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics (MVM) at the University of Karlsruhe, which has existed since Bokela was founded, was further developed in the following years, particularly in the field of solid-liquid separation. The research work provided insights into the relationships between product, process, and equipment influences in filtration, which formed the basis for process and equipment innovations.

In order to better address the Australian market, Bokela Australia Pty Ltd was founded in 2003 as the first subsidiary outside Germany.

On December 31, 2014, Bokela became majority-owned by the Japanese group TSK (Tsukishima Kikai Co., Ltd., Tokyo, known today as Tsukishima Holdings Ltd.) as the result of a friendly takeover. On January 1, 2018, Tsukishima Kikai finally acquired all shares in Bokela and became the sole owner. As part of the takeover, the company was renamed “BOKELA GmbH” in 2019.

The company headquarters are located in Ragolds-Park (stylized RAGOLDS-Park), the former premises of Ragolds GmbH & Co. in the eastern district (Oststadt) of Karlsruhe.

Cake-forming filtration
For cake-forming filtration in the field of continuous rotary vacuum filters, the product range includes disc, drum, and pan filters. For continuous pressure filtration, the portfolio consists of disc and drum filters.

In pressure filtration (also known as hyperbaric filtration), a continuous rotary filter (disc or drum filter) is completely installed in a pressure vessel filled with compressed air or another compressed gas of up to 7 bar (a). This means that much higher pressure differences are available for filtering and dehumidification the filter cake than with vacuum filters.

For particularly low residual moisture levels, this type of filter can also be used for vapor pressure filtration. In this hybrid process, which combines mechanical and thermal operating principles, the filter cake is treated with steam in a steam hood, which only covers a limited part of the filter surface up to the point of steam breakthrough. The cake is then dried by a compressed air stream to its final moisture content. Accelerated dewatering can halve the residual moisture content of the filter cake compared to pressure filtration.

The cake-forming filters can be designed on a very small scale using specially developed Bokela laboratory filters.

Depending on the technology and series, the filter areas vary between 1 m² and up to 352 m².

Crossflow filtration
In addition to cake-forming filtration, Bokela also designs, constructs and builds systems for crossflow filtration based on the technological principle of dynamic crossflow. In contrast to classic crossflow filtration, dynamic crossflow filtration generates the typical tangential overflow of the filter surface using rotors rather than geometric flow control in the apparatus. This enables separation and washing of solids in the particle range down to 0.01 µm. This technology can be used with membranes for microfiltration and ultrafiltration as well as with metallic filter media for separating solids particles of different sizes (classification). The company also offers its own laboratory filters for both of these types of crossflow filtration, which can also be used to carry out design tests for demonstration purposes (BoCrossTest).

Fields of application
The individual filter types are used in a wide range of industries such as the pharmaceutical and food industry, fine chemicals and the petrochemical industry in order to obtain the purest possible filtrates, pure (washed) solids, high solids concentrations or low residual moisture. In the mining sector (underground and open-cast mining), possible applications include the filtration and dewatering of ore and mineral concentrates as well as tailings such as gold/copper, zinc and gold/silver residues in order to enable the safe, environment-friendly storage of tailings and the sustainable use of water.

In addition to services such as the commissioning and maintenance of its own systems, the company also offers conversions, optimizations and modernizations of filtration systems from other manufacturers (so-called “revamping”) based on the experience gained in the early years.

Patents
The company continues to be active in research and development and has registered over 30 different property rights and patents for processes and devices worldwide (as of 2023).

Certifications
The company uses a quality management system in accordance with DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 and has been continuously certified by TÜV Süd AG since 1997.

Awards

 * 1998 “Dr. Rudolf Eberle Prize” Innovation Prize of the German State of Baden-Württemberg
 * 1999 Top 30 “Courageous entrepreneurs the country needs” initiative under the patronage of Roman Herzog
 * 2010 “Dr. Rudolf Eberle Prize” Innovation Prize of German the State of Baden-Württemberg
 * 2011 1st prize winner of the “Seed & Grow Award” of the Karlsruhe Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK Karlsruhe) under the patronage of Lothar Späth
 * 2011 Top 100 “The most innovative 100 medium-sized companies” under the patronage of Lothar Späth
 * 2015 1st prize GLOBAL2015 Foreign Trade Award of the Karlsruhe TechnologyRegion

Trivia
With the Solid/liquid separation lexicon (German edition FFT-Lexikon), the company maintained an extensive knowledge database in printed book form on the subject of filtration, which has since been published in digital form as “Bokipedia” on the Internet.

From 2013 to 2020, the company building (on the Ragolds-Park site) housed the publicly accessible Rachengold Museum, which consisted of exhibits relating to the Ragolds company (founded in 1887 as "Erste Badische Dampfzuckerwaren- und Drageefabrik" (First steam confectionery and dragée factory in Baden)), which Jörg Schindler (Managing Director from 1952 until the closure of Ragolds GmbH & Co. in 2005) had collected over the years. Bokela took over the entire collection for a symbolic euro. The official opening of the museum took place on July 19, 2013. After the museum closed, the exhibits were handed over to the Karlsruhe City Archive.