How Custom, Portable Air Filtration Addresses Workflow and Industrial Clean Air Challenges
Industrial clean air challenges are numerous, varied and bring significant impacts to operations, efficiency and safety. Some challenges are large in scale and may disrupt adjacent operations or require costly moves of equipment - such as sanding, painting or coating of large equipment like an electric turbine. Other challenges are smaller in scale, such as welding and CNC machining, or even short-term projects such as prototyping and R&D, but they still require clean air to ensure employee safety, compliance and production efficiency.
Despite the complex nature of industrial air filtration, indoor air quality compliance doesn’t have to be a hassle. Duroair has designed and developed easy-to-install flexible solutions that move with your workflow.
These solutions:
- Meet Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) compliance.
- Safeguard employees.
- Maximize productivity.
- Improve your bottom line.
Retractable Enclosures Offer Flexible Industrial Clean Air Solutions
How is it possible for industrial clean air solutions to not only meet safety compliance requirements, but improve productivity and reduce downtime? Afterall, sanding or painting large industrial workpieces, such as a jet engine, requires a lot of space. Those processes release toxins into the air that are not only dangerous to workers but will damage other equipment. Some processes are incompatible with other processes.
Manufacturers are often forced to transport large pieces by dolly to a separate bay outside of the primary ventilation system. This type of movement may cause other workflows to temporarily stop, slowing work in progress (WIP). If manufacturers choose to do the sanding, painting or coating work in place, they may have to require all workers not involved with those tasks to vacate the facility until the process is complete, decontaminate the hanger or building and thoroughly clean to remove particulates before starting a new task.
Duroair’s engineers figured out how to flip the dynamic by bringing clean air to the workpiece. They designed a series of portable, retractable enclosures that work with a patented air filtration system. The solutions are easy to install. When the work is done, the enclosure is taken down and can be used elsewhere in the facility or stored at a fraction of its functional space.
6-Stage Filtration System Protects Workforce, Meets Compliance
Sanding, painting and coating processes often release toxic hexavalent chromium, isocyanates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air. These are serious health threats to your valuable workforce.
Safeguarding employees from indoor air quality (IAQ) threats often has required additional workflow delays, such as airing out an aircraft hangar after sanding, coating, or painting large aircraft components. Workflows could not continue until the hangar was deemed safe for employees to re-enter. Having a dedicated area for sanding, painting, and coating was not a cost-effective option, as it required extensive material handling and labor for clean up.
Duroair has developed patented six-stage filtration that captures 99% of particulates and thoroughly cleans the air of VOCs, isocyanates and hexavalent chromium. Duroair clean air solutions meet EPA, OSHA, NFPA, and NESHAP compliance standards. The solutions range from draft tables to certified clean rooms.
Portability and Versatility are a Powerful Combination for Productivity
Duroair’s solutions are designed with efficiency in mind – from easy-to-install readiness to portability to the ability to work multiple processes in one space.
The systems:
- Are literally flexible, so they can open and close around a process or equipment.
- Can be integrated into existing work cells.
- Can serve as an all-in-one sanding, coating, and painting booth where workers simply change out filters for each task.
Many functions can be performed in one isolation enclosure, such as corrosion control, mechanical assembly, welding, dust collection, bonding processes, and blasting with a filter change between processes.
For example, Duroair worked with one contractor to install two paint booths in a hangar so they could isolate the process and not lose access to the entire workspace. Duroair’s modular/retractable enclosure allowed them to sand without contaminating the entire indoor environment. They got their workspace back when surface preparation was completed.
Among other efficiencies of Duroair solutions:
- The enclosure design accommodates overhead cranes, which allows you to save time moving work pieces into place.
- Taper Draft technology decreases drying times.
- Commissioning time is greatly reduced as Duroair’s solutions can be installed in days and weeks as opposed to months for alternative approaches.
Savings are Realized From Capital Investments to Operational Costs
Duroair systems do not need to be affixed to a building or facility, reducing the capital investment in permanent space. It is capital equipment that can be deployed where needed.
Savings in operational costs are derived when workpieces can stay in place. Any repair, blast, prep, coating application can be performed on site, saving time, reducing shipping costs, reducing material handling costs and mitigating the risk of damage to critical and sensitive workpieces.
The solutions also provide savings by:
- Breaking down in hours to be shipped and quickly re-deployed to another facility, which helps keep multi-facility production on schedule.
- Providing additional floor space and flexibility to take on new contracts without having to increase real estate.
- Eliminating the need for some subcontracted work or outsourcing, which can lead to risks of high costs, increased lead times, and lack of control over quality.
- Reducing heating and cooling costs for non-vented units.
Solutions Meet Demands of Engineers, Facility Managers and EHS Officers
Duroair’s industrial clean air solutions will meet the needs of engineers, facility managers and EHS officers by helping them:
- Increase operational efficiency.
- Find agile ways to safeguard critical tasks.
- Reduce downtime.
- Safeguard products without impacting productivity.
- Ensure employee safety.
- Meet all compliance requirements.
Contact our industrial clean air experts today for a free consultation.
