Exposure to nuisance dust can be extremely dangerous and present serious health risks, including asthma, silicosis, and lung cancer. This combustible dust can also present an explosion hazard, leading to injuries, the destruction of buildings, and even a catastrophic loss of life. Many industries use dust collection systems to control and remove the harmful particles from entering into the airstream. Industrial fans are used in conjunction with the dust collectors to help exhaust clean filtered air out of the system. In this particular case, a manufacturing facility in Arizona was in serious need for dust control inside its bagging facility.

The Challenge
The biggest challenge in providing this dust collector system to the manufacturer was a major restraint of fitting the dust collector and fan within a confined area. The spacing available was so limited that the dust collection system had to be built within 6 in. on all four sides. With such an impossibly small space, this meant there was no room to mount the fan next to the dust collector. Not only did the limited space present an issue for the dust collection system and fan being installed, but there was another silo and other equipment coming in as well that would require its own amount of space.

The Solution
Because of these space restrictions, it was determined that a special system needed to be created to overcome this obstacle and meet this manufacturing facility’s needs. Clean Air Specialists designed and engineered a two-story system to capture nuisance dust at their hopper, weigh station/scale, fill point, bagging area, bag stacking area. They also installed hoods underneath their conveyor at various transfer points. A custom stand and clean air manifold were built to accommodate the customers very limited space.

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Clean Air Specialists was able to supply the necessary clean air to the system by using a Chicago Blower Design 95 high pressure backward curved fan, 24,500 cfm @ 15 in. static pressure. The wheel of the Design 95 fan uses heavy backward curved blades, specifically designed to handle dusty and harsh environments. It consists of solid steel blades that are continuously welded to a streamlined wheel side plate and heavy steel back plate. The fan used for this project had a 75-hp motor and variable frequency drive. Because there was no room to mount the fan, the fan needed to be elevated and a special stand was engineered. In doing this, there also had to be a custom-made manifold coming off of the clean air side of the collector and into the inlet of the fan.

There was also another manifold on top of the collector that needed to be custom made as there was no room to run a 42-in. duct into the facility. Clean Air Specialists was able to work around this by splitting up the duct into three different duct branches and customizing another manifold that goes directly into the dirty air side of the collector. 

End Result
The system was created to work around the existing equipment, within literally inches of the customer footprint, with the incoming silo and other equipment in mind, and the customer greatly appreciated this. The dust collection system, fan, and custom equipment worked well together and the customer was pleased with its new dust collector and fan. Since a speed potentiometer was installed in the system that included a manual/auto select switch (for speed control point), the customer was able to maintain the desired volume and static. And because this potentiometer also included an alarm light that would go off in case of a dirty air situation or if something wasn’t right with the system, the customer’s dust hazard worries were put at ease. The manufacturing facility can now operate safely, knowing that the harmful dust issue is eliminated due to the fan used in the dust collector system controlling the harsh particles exhausted into the airstream.

For more information, contact Chicago Blower Corp. (Glendale Heights, IL) at 630-858-2600 or www.chicagoblower.com.

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