2006 AFS Chair - Ed Homonoff

Ed Homonoff, our immediate past Chair, has been in the filtration business most of his career. He received a Bachelors of Textile Science (1976) and Masters of Textile Science (1978) from Clemson University and immediately started working in filtration at the Fram Corporation upon graduation from Graduate school. At Fram he rose thru the ranks of the engineering staff to become Director of Advanced Technology.

Ed left Fram in 1989 and went to work at Dexter Nonwovens (now Ahlstrom) where he led the business team that installed and started up a hydroentanglement line that produced medical and industrial wipes products in Scotland. In 1996, Ed moved to Knowlton Specialty Papers and Knowlton Nonwovens where he was the Director of R&D for a specialty paper and needlepunch nonwoven business.

He has been an independent consultant focused on taking technology to market for companies interested in organic growth since 1999. Ed has presented numerous papers and chaired many AFS sessions and is the author of 6 US patents.

Why did you join the AFS and filtration industry?

I joined the AFS because I was working in the filtration industry and it was my job to find other segments of the business to participate in besides automotive filtration. AFS was a good source for meeting people of various filtration and separations backgrounds for networking and gathering market intelligence.

What changes (technology, economic, governmental, environmental etc) have had the most impact on the filtration industry?

The ability to communicate 24/7 from almost anywhere in the world has made the world a much smaller place and redefined who many of our competitors are on a global basis. Filtration technology has continued to extend the limits of achieving the “most filtration with the least pressure drop to have the longest life” mainly by applying outside technologies to the filtration industry (films, nanofibers, synthetic nonwovens).

Regulated markets have continued to appear and governments have taken steps to protect the environmental effects of industry on their citizens (diesel, coal-fired power, ground water, etc). Many segments of the filtration and separations industries are growing and vibrant and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Where do you see the filtration industry in 5-10 years?

I personally see this group of industries as growing significantly over the next 5-10 years. Water is no longer a free resource. Air and contaminants from one area are being carried over another area and damaging that groups way of life. Manufacturing tolerances are trending smaller, therefore increasing the demand for cleaner and higher yield manufacturing processes. All of these lead to demands for more and better filtration and separations processes in our world. The business is healthy for the long term.