Several industries face problems from dust released during processing or transportation, so general dedusting applications can be found in a wide range of industries, such as construction, manufacturing, and mining.
Some common dedusting applications include dust extraction systems for
woodworking and
metalworking, dust collectors in
food processing plants, and air exhaust systems in coating facilities or
pharmaceutical clean rooms.
Dedusting is essential for maintaining a safe and healthy work environment, for minimising the risk of equipment failure and downtime, but also to prevent product loss and cross contamination.
Preventing product loss/cross contamination
Among other common demands from clients, the recovery of product while preventing cross contamination is a major concern.
On facilities with multiple dust sources, the dust captured from each of these sources will get conveyed to through a Local Exhaust Ventilation system (LEV) to a central collection unit (ex.cartridge or baghouse), impeding the recovery of the product.
Examples of such processes are the bag filling lines of food products with different
food flavours or
powder pigments with different colours, separated in different lines. These processing lines are commonly equipped with regular cyclones with low efficiency for smaller particles, resulting in losses at each source ending up at the final filter where it can turn into an effective product loss because of hygiene standards or because of mixing.
With a correctly designed cyclone, losses at each of the filling units or painting station can be greatly reduced >90%.
Such losses can also occur on systems where there is
rotation of the powders processed in the same line and there is the need to recover them.
That is the case of
electrostatic coating (see figure) where very different powders are used in the same day and where is the need to recover the unused quantities lost to the LEV. Another example are
milling operations, where there can be different powders handled but also different target sizes.
On both, the powder collected by cartridge or baghouse filters will necessarily entrain into the fibres of the filters. Not only cross contamination is inevitable but also the product can be lost due to hygienic / quality requirements.
Using a
high efficiency cyclone is very advantageous, not only can losses be greatly reduced, but also cyclones can be quickly cleaned in place, with no element change necessary, allowing for lower downtime required for product rotation.
Clients need cyclones that maximize powder yield, but are also compact, easy and fast to clean and disinfect to allow for fast batch turnover.
ACS solutions for
high efficiency cyclones (HR up to MK families) dramatically reduce losses
(down to 1/8 of other cyclones) and achieve unmatched efficiency, even for very fine products. These can be equipped with state-of-the-art CIP and many other features. All models are tailor optimized and designed by our team to meet the client's requirements for each installation.