An industrial dust collector device is capable of enhancing safety, increasing effectiveness and reducing expenses wherever and whenever it is used to its full operational capacity. It is intended to have a beneficial impact on your working environment.

Some industries that are involved in chemical processing, food and agriculture, pharmaceutical, metal and woodworking can compromise their employees’ health because of the air they breathe within the workplace. Soot, dust, debris, toxic gases, and chemical products can linger in the air, leading to problems to the health of your personnel and even with the machineries. Such contaminants are removed from the air by using an industrial dust collector which gives cleaner air to your factory, thus, providing your business and your staff significant benefits. It is also very important for small shops to acquire dust collectors to keep their space free from dust and debris. BestofMachinery features the top dust collectors for small workshops with essential details and tips.

What is an Industrial Dust Collector?

Generally speaking, a dust collector keeps the air safe in an industrial working environment. A dust collector operates with the use of vacuum pressure to deliver polluted air through an airtight system and proper filtration. The device can also remove indoor or outdoor air, always at the applicable emission ratios. 

Although this simple definition provides an overview of what dust collectors do, their function extends to many distinct businesses where they may be needed by regulations for extra quality or safety. However, a dust collector needs to be closely inspected and requires quality maintenance to attain and sustain an airtight transfer and effective filtering state – regardless of the reason for installation.

There are usually industrial dust collectors with elevated or low velocity systems. The substances are transmitted to a point of collection that could be one of several forms and generally involves some filter sort. More about the dust collection system's settings and effectiveness varies on the business and facility, the type of materials you process, and the level of safety and efficiency you need. Some people want basic adherence, while others seem to go beyond the norms of Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA and Environmental Protection Agency or EPA regulations.

The Benefits of Using an Industrial Dust Collector

1. It will improve the health and safety of the workers.

Whenever the air is packed of dirt, dust, debris, chemical compounds or toxic gases, it jeopardizes the lungs of anyone breathing the air. Not only that, but sometimes these pollutants may gather on or near a machinery, causing a potential fire hazard. These pollutants are removed from the air with the use of a dust collector, filtering the air as well as enhancing everybody else's health and safety inside the workplace.

2. It will increase productivity

If a machine has accumulated dirt, dust and debris, such contaminants can find its way inside the equipment, messing with the mechanics. This may result in slower working machines and the equipment getting completely damaged. Damaged machinery requires constant attention as well as repairs. Using industrial dust collectors avoid this hazard, enabling optimum effectiveness and reliability of your equipment.

3. It will help in producing a product that has great quality

The contaminants in the air can also accumulate on the products all through the production process. Chemical compounds and toxic gases may leak into your products, leaving them with an off odor smell. Such conditions can directly affect the finished product's quality. However, dust collectors suppress the contaminants in the air substantially, keeping them away from the manufactured products, enhancing their quality and promoting consumer satisfaction.

4. It meets compliance regulations

For occupational health and safety, there seem to be countless laws and regulations in place. Several of these guidelines have something to do with the environment and the air quality. Poor air quality could indeed cost you a fortune, not only from the fines, but also by endangering your employees and producing possible dangers which can even ruin your business. By using and industrial dust collector, it will enable you to conform to state laws, with the added benefit of making sure that everyone and everything are protected within the premises.

5. It will make employees happier

It is a given fact that employees suffer whenever the air quality is terrible. As a consequence, they get unhappy and begin looking elsewhere for a job. Unhappy employees usually do not function or work efficiently, and high turnover of employees can cost you a lot of money. Maintaining the air clean and healthy with a dust collector strengthens your employees ' productivity, enabling you to keep wonderful, happy people in the workplace.

Tips for a Safe Operation Using Industrial Dust Collector

Processing plant companies depend on industrial dust collectors to keep personnel and the workplace as safe as possible and to ensure compliance with regulatory standards. Below are tips to ensure that the operation using the dust collector happens at the top safety and reliability rate.

Must Be Equipped with a Deflagration Protection

If an industrial dust collector collects combustible dust, a deflagration protection is very necessary. A known passive process that is cost-effective is called venting. Once a specified pressure is reached inside the dust collector, an explosion vent opens up, enabling the flame and excess pressure from the deflagration to pass out to a safe zone.

A flameless vent has a housing which contains a high-temperature mesh panel that has the ability to absorb the heat and flame.  It is mounted in a conventional explosion vent. The vent will open up to release the pressure and flame into the housing during an occurrence. The mesh layers will then absorb the flame and heat, allowing a part of the pressure flow to pass through safely into the working area. This facilitates for a standard indoor ventilation to be accomplished safely where otherwise it might harm employees or ignite huge explosions. There are also other protective devices. Work it out with an expert dust collector to consider which one is ideally suited for your business.

In-depth knowledge regarding the pressure capabilities

Understanding the collector's pressure capacities is critically important in the vent sizing specification and preference. The best approach to an optimal deflagration safety is to make comparisons between the venting vessel strength with the deflagration intensity and the vent burst pressure. 

Ductwork protection

The National Association for Fire Protection or NFPA necessitates the protection for the ductwork and the upstream safety procedures of a dust collector. The ducting should be equipped with a valve that has flow-activated isolation which protects the downstream work spaces and operations from that of the spreading of flames and pressure via the inlet duct once deflagration takes place in a dust collector.

The pressure wave would then close the valve during deflagration of a dust collector, prohibiting the propagation of flames and smoke to parts upstream of the valve. The valve is shut down and has to be opened manually. If enabled, the valve parts may be compromised and a full inspection is necessary before the valve is returned back to service.

The hoppers should be free from dusts

The hopper of a dust collector should never be used for dust storage. The only purpose of the hopper is to funnel dust into the storage bin. Dust amassed in a hopper causes a potential danger for fire or deflagration. Accumulated dust in the hopper can also decrease the efficiency of the dust collector by blocking the system and restricting the pulse-cleaning from doing its function. A self-dumping hopper facilitates quick dust removal whilst also shielding the collector and hopper from any unwanted dust leakage.

Always use the cleaning controls

The cleaning system design of the industrial dust collector operates in combination with its filter design. The selective cleaning control can provide a convenient way in keeping the filters clean and maintenance-friendly.

Constant cleaning is appropriate for porous dusts such as silica and some other minerals, heavy dust loading operations like those of thermal spraying or plasma cutting, or lightweight dust like those which has silica fumes and paper fines.

Cleaning on demand is suitable for most kinds of dust. This configuration regulates the pressure difference throughout the dust collector's portion of clean air and the filter for dirty air. The operator can set a diverse selection of differential pressures to initiate and halt the cleaning of the cartridge. This setting utilizes the least volume of compressed air as well as produces maximum filter cleaning effectiveness and the filter life.

Downtime filtering enables time-based pulsing as of the end of a plant switch, once a batch process has been completed or after an upset circumstance that would impact the effectiveness of the filter. The system will shut down entirely after the cleaning period is completed. This is a significant function because, due to incorrect usage of compressed air, over-cleaning of a cartridge during operation triggers increased emissions, shorter life of the cartridge and increased energy expenses.

Act in accordance with the emissions standards

The United States Environmental Protection Agency or EPA along with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA needs to know if emissions will be commensurate to the required thresholds or if it below it. The ratings scale of the Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value or MERV is a useful metric of the current effectiveness of a filter. This does not, however, detect a drop in pressure, pulsing emissions, the energy performance, and some other parameters that actually represent the effectiveness of an industrial dust collector.

Know how to safely change filters

Generally speaking, when it comes to changing the filters, employees should never have to access the dust collector to change it. An industrial dust collector requiring entry during operation pose employees at risk and require businesses to file permits for limited space entry and monitoring for gas. Filters should be placed readily for easy access and slide in and out of the housing for optimum safety.

Basic, easy-open, heavy-gauge doors will be able to provide access to a quick cartridge change-out strategy which will not involve having to enter into a collector. Look for doors with a lock-out function to ensure the safety of the workers.

Know when will be the appropriate time to change filters

A simple but crucial safety requirement would be to replace filters once airflow through the device hits a pressure difference threshold as recommended by the manufacturer or if the pressure drop all over the collector adversely affects the capacity of the dust collector function and the dust collection system to absorb the dust, thus permitting it to spread into the work environment. Several long-life cartridge filters may still function between change-outs for at least two years or sometimes even longer. Nevertheless, a filter replacement will be much more frequent for those with heavy dust loading processes.

Fire prevention

A variety of components and techniques are applicable for spark-generating processes, ranging from flammable filter media to spark surge suppressors in the style of drop-out containers, punctured screens or cyclone devices mounted at collector inlets. Almost all of the installations usually also require fire sprinkler systems.

Vertically installed cartridges lessen fire or deflagration because given the nature of their alignment it can help to reduce heavy dust loads on a filter. By contrast, dust is collected at the top of the filters to those with horizontally installed cartridges. This setting can alter filter life, provide a dusty layer to ignite sparks and bolster the filter elements ' working pressure drop.

Additional safety accessories

With additional safety accessories, the safety efficacy of an industrial dust collector can be enhanced. Railed safety systems and caged ledges compliant with OSHA can avoid slips and drops when employees enter the collector for operation. Lock-out or tag-out doors avoid injury as a result to an inadvertent door opening during a pulsing process and/or harmful dust exposure. In which extremely toxic dust is collected, a containment system for bag-in or bag-out may be necessary during change-out to keep employees away from used filters.

Safety monitoring filters should be included

You may also want to mount a safety monitoring filter for your collector. This is a supplementary set of top-efficiency air filters that prohibits gathered dust from re-entering the working area when the main filtering system of the dust collector leaks. In a dust collection system, which recirculates the air back into the production environment, a safety monitoring filter must be used.