Clean Air in Zero to 60 for Mission-Critical Operations

Military and defense contractors face daily, indoor air quality (IAQ) challenges, due to contaminants released from manufacturing and maintenance processes. Finishing metal machinery and components can be particularly hazardous, both to employee health and production deadlines.

When time is money, permanent enclosures are not efficient for alternating between short-term production projects and long-term constructions. Mission-critical manufacturing requires moving workflows from welding and sanding to coating and painting.

What if there was a modular, industrial air filtration system that could be deployed in hours – that moved with each cellular workflow? Duroair custom engineers clean air solutions that bring clean air to each rapid-moving manufacturing operation. When paired with a retractable enclosure, each vented or non-vented air filtration system can cost-effectively accommodate military vehicles, aircraft, and other large components for sanding, painting, and coating processes.

These clean air solutions not only keep contractors on schedule; they safeguard against the safety and logistical challenges associated with essential manufacturing and maintenance tasks.

Manufacturing & Maintenance IAQ Challenges

From MRAPs and fighter jets to submarines and helicopters, military transportation machinery requires special coatings to ensure components will last in the field.

Unfortunately, these durable coatings often contain toxic hexavalent chromium, isocyanates, and VOCs that are released during sanding, coating, and painting processes. Hexavalent Chromium is released almost every time these components require maintenance and finishing, exposing workers to airborne carcinogens and irritants.

These indoor air contaminants can cause:

• Nose & throat irritation: Minor irritations may include runny nose, sneezing, coughing, or itching and burning sensations. Long-term exposure can increase the risk for nosebleeds, sores, or even perforations in the nasal septum (wall separating the nasal passages).
• Skin reactions: Brief skin contact with hexavalent chromium can cause allergic swelling or a red, itchy rash, and repeated skin contact can result in a more severe, longer-lasting dermatitis. Contact with non-intact skin can even lead to chrome ulcers.
• Lung & stomach irritation: While most people do not develop respiratory tract irritations, some employees can develop asthma wheezing and shortness of breath. In extreme cases, workers can develop lung cancer or stomach conditions such as gastritis or gastrointestinal ulcers.

Protecting employees from these hazards can pose costly logistical challenges associated with air hazard containment.

Indoor Air Filtration Solutions

Safeguarding military manufacturing employees from IAQ threats often requires workflow delays, such as airing out an aircraft hangar after sanding, coating, or painting large jet components. Workflows cannot continue until the hangar is deemed safe for employees to re-enter.

Complex HVAC systems with HEPA filters can mitigate indoor air hazard risks, but these measures require extensive time and labor. And time is not a luxury granted to military and defense manufacturing operations.

Take, for example, a typical finishing project such as re-camouflaging jeeps or Humvees to be re-deployed in the field after completing desert operations. Typically, contractors are forced to designate a separate location to remove the old paint and then apply the new paint color.

Transporting the vehicles to a dedicated area requires extensive material handling and man-hours. This only compounds the labor required to clean up the sand and dust from previous deployments.

Duroair can eliminate many of these production bottlenecks with flexible, clean air alternatives that can quickly deploy for existing manufacturing cells as needed.

These portable booths can:

• Serve as an all-in-one finishing booth for safe sanding, coating, and painting, where workers simply change out filters for each task
• Break down in hours to be shipped and quickly re-deployed to another facility, to keep multi-facility production on schedule
• Provide more floor space and flexibility to take on new contracts without having to increase real estate

From manufacturing and MRO to prototyping and R&D, a custom-engineered Duroair solution can deliver these benefits while cost-effectively shielding workers from airborne hexavalent chromium and VOCs.

Deploy a Clean Air Solution

Across the country, military and defense manufacturers turn to Duroair for quick-deploy, cost-effective indoor air filtration. By bringing clean air to each workpiece, our custom-engineered solutions can save valuable man-hours and floor space, and prevent production bottlenecks.