I need a knowledgeable engineer in the area of filtration and fluid dynamics. I need a cost effective small filter with a high flow rate which likely means specialized material selection and engineering to maximize surface area for flow.
Filter:
1) Ideally not plastic, but stainless 316, probably sintered or metallic membrane. Failing that I may end up back at a polyethersulfone or polysulfone type of filter
2) The filter is very small for the target micron filtration at about 20mm wide, 40mm long and no more than 95MM circumference. I have some flexibility to go larger, but not much
3) Micron filtration target area is 0.1 to 1 microns, smaller pore is better, but I may have to be flexible here to have such a small sized filter and maintaining a high flow rate
4) Flow rate is not yet determined, but I am going to run some tests to define it better, but higher flow rate is better
Basically I need to optimize the variables of filter size, micron pore size, flow rate and cost. I am "most" flexible on micron size and a little less so on flow rate. One approach would be to engineer the filter to maximize the surface area by either horizontal pleats or flutes or something similar and minimize the usage of excess space. If I can't achieve this with metallic membrane or sintered stainless steel then I will probably fall back to plastic based.