Industrial Dust Extractor
Industrial dust extractors control, reduce and filter potentially harmful dust and fumes in plant facilities to meet environmental and workplace safety requirements. They also help plants comply with air quality guidelines.
While each design application varies by industry, the objective is to filter and separate pollutants from the air then release sanitized air into the workspace. There are five common types of dust collection systems:
Baghouse
Baghouse industrial dust extractors are used to filter dirty air in a variety of applications that generate high levels of airborne particulate. These systems are often used in metalworking workshops and power plants, mainly to handle high dust loads.
One of the key factors in the success of a baghouse is the type of filter fabric used. Choosing the wrong filter fabric can reduce the lifespan of filters and increase energy costs. It also increases the industrial dust extractor likelihood of pressure drop, leading to poor venting, damaged equipment, higher emissions, and a dangerous work environment.
Another important factor is the cleaning system. These can be shaker systems that use a motor to move the dust off the filter, reverse air cleaning systems that blow compressed air into the center of the bags, or pulse jet cleaning systems that blast a burst of compressed air into the filters to forcibly dislodge accumulated dust.
It’s important to choose a baghouse that can handle your air volume and dust concentration levels. This will help you avoid overtaxing the system and ensure it maintains efficiency over time. It’s also important to consider the possibility of expanding your dust collection system in the future. Choosing a modular system that allows for expansion will enable you to easily adjust the system to accommodate your changing needs.
Cartridge
Cartridge dust collectors are a more compact version of the baghouse and work well for dry, coarse particles such as wood shavings, fine fiberglass, shot blasting, and grain and feed dust. They feature pleated filters that are cylindrical in shape, allowing them to pack more filter surface area into a smaller footprint. Filters may be coated with cellulose or polyester, and some are manufactured using spunbond or nanofiber material for added durability. They operate by blowing air into the dirty air plenum and then through the filters to remove dust particles from the filter media. When the filters are full, a pulse-style compressed air cleaning system backflushes the contaminants from the filter and deposits them in a hopper.
The cylinder-shaped cartridges offer a higher filtration capacity per square foot than baghouse collectors, reducing overall costs for industrial air filtration. Depending on your application, you can choose from a range of filtration sizes, efficiencies, and coating options to ensure that you get the best performance.
Cartridge collectors are also easier to maintain than baghouse systems, with a smaller footprint and height that makes them less difficult to locate and access for routine maintenance. They can be configured for ducted source capture or ambient air filtration, and are a great choice for applications with space and height restrictions.
Internal Return
The Internal Return industrial dust collector is designed to prevent harmful or bothersome dust and fumes from settling on surfaces, as well as ensure compliance with major regulatory bodies like OSHA and NFPA. These are different from housekeeping dust industrial dust extractor factory systems and industrial vacuum cleaners in that they are designed for full facility or process filtration rather than material conveyance.
A key feature is a system for detecting blockages or full dust bags and acoustic alarms to alert you to these issues, so you don’t keep working with a partially blocked hose or full bag. In addition, many of these machines have a manual or automatic filter cleaning option; this helps to reduce motor burn-out by preventing it from overworking to draw air through a clogged filter.
Finally, the now clean air is directed back into the room or re-circulated to other areas of the plant. The ducting can be configured for general ventilation with zone return, which is useful in cold climates to recover heat from the ceiling, or for source capture using hoods over individual workstations, providing better air distribution with lower energy costs and equipment requirements.
This type of industrial dust extractor can be used on all power tools, but is particularly suited for those with 4″ diameter or smaller hose ports such as sanders, dremels, edgers and most grinders. Using this type of machine will make your job quicker and easier, plus it will prolong the life of your tool and accessories too, saving you money in the long run.
Electrostatic Precipitator
Electrostatic precipitators are industrial dust extractors that use electric energy to charge particulates either positively or negatively. The particles are then attracted to collector plates carrying the opposite charge. They have high collection efficiencies and can handle large volumes of smoke.
ESPs have been in use for many years to control particulate emissions from fossil fuel-fired boilers, steel mills, cement plants, lead, zinc and copper smelters. Their efficiencies can reach up to 99 percent. They are widely used to control fly ash from coal-fired boilers. ESPs are often installed along with bag filters or cyclone dust collectors to increase the effectiveness of particulate removal from flue gas streams.
There are different types of ESPs including wet, tubular, and inline. The basic working principle of all ESPs involves using a corona discharge and electrodes to charge the particles in the air stream. The area or field between the negative electrodes is ionized, which gives plenty of free electrons to the particles in the flue gas. This ionization process makes the particles become negatively charged and move towards the positive electrodes.
These positively charged plates attract the negatively charged particles and attach to them. This process is assisted by rapper coils, which send a shearing force to the particles and break them apart so that they can be easily dropped off the plates due to gravitational forces. The collected dust falls into a container called a hopper. Depending on the design of the ESP, the hopper can be either dry or wet and can also have water sprays for quicker dust removal.
