The VDMA OPC for PAEFS ini­ti­at­ive, launched in July 2019, released OPC 40740 in Octo­ber 2023 and sub­sequently pub­lished release 1.0.1 in March 2025. As a Joint Work­ing Group, the ini­ti­at­ive is organ­ized by VDMA Air Pol­lu­tion Con­trol and sup­por­ted by the OPC Foundation.

PAEFS mod­el­ling examples: Mod­el­ling solu­tions for air fil­tra­tion sys­tems with redund­ant cart­ridge fil­ters or with sev­er­al sep­ar­at­ors and for elec­tro­stat­ic sep­ar­at­ors with three fil­ter stages are presen­ted using three examples.

The Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion defines essen­tial data struc­tures, para­met­ers, and meth­ods for com­mu­nic­a­tion between pro­cess air extrac­tion and fil­tra­tion sys­tems, related machinery, sup­port­ing sys­tems (e.g. vent­il­a­tion, con­vey­ors), and high­er-level man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems (e.g. MES), enabling dia­gnostics and para­met­er settings.

A fun­da­ment­al task of PAEFS in indus­tri­al pro­cess air tech­no­logy is the ful­fil­ment of the basic func­tions:

• to sup­ply a pro­cess with the air required,
• to main­tain the qual­ity of the air dur­ing the oper­a­tion of the pro­cess, and
• to elim­in­ate released sub­stances from the process.

PAEFS are essen­tial sys­tems used in the pro­cess and man­u­fac­tur­ing industry.

Ongo­ing work: Prac­tic­al imple­ment­a­tion of the Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion in pre­par­a­tion (test and real time applications).