Optimize Corrosion Maintenance and Prevention With a Portable Clean Air System
Preventing corrosion is essential to safely manufacturing and maintaining large industrial machines and aerospace equipment. Unfortunately, the corrosion prevention and maintenance processes also involve extremely toxic chemicals that pose a risk to everyone on the shop floor.
Installing a permanent hard walled paint booth is one possibility, but this involves a huge investment of money and labor, not to mention a significant delay as you wait for the construction to be finished. If you need a fast, cost-effective solution for clean air during corrosion maintenance, consider a retractable soft-walled enclosure.
The Importance of Corrosion Prevention
The smallest spot of corrosion can pose fatal risks to aircraft, ships, trains, submarines, and other essential equipment. Even a tiny bit of corrosion may spread to critical parts, including battery compartments and landing gear. Corrosion can cause a system failure at the most catastrophic time.
Corrosion may look like classic rust spots, or it may have a gray, white, or green appearance. Salt air is the most common cause of corrosion, but it can also be caused by acids, alkalis, and other salts. Thankfully, there are chemical treatments that can make metal impenetrable to salt and other corrosive agents. Unfortunately, these same chemicals present significant health hazards when inhaled or touched by employees, complicating the application process to prevent corrosion.
Indoor Air Risks of Corrosion Maintenance
Corrosion maintenance in the aerospace industry usually involves removing the protective coatings, treating the metal, and refinishing it with new protective coating. These coatings contain highly toxic chemicals, including hexavalent chromium, isocyanates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are released into the air during sanding, coating, and painting. These compounds are extremely toxic and can cause health issues from skin rashes to respiratory infections to cancer. They are among some of the most dangerous chemicals used in manufacturing and are governed by stringent requirements from both OSHA and the EPA.
These health concerns are exacerbated by the fact that corrosion maintenance in certain industries, such as aerospace, often takes place in large hangars or large facilities where it is difficult to contain the air. Thus, the entire facility needs to be shut down whenever this corrosion maintenance takes place in order to protect employees, resulting in significant downtime for the shop floor and a loss of revenue.
Some facilities solve this problem by building a permanent hard walled paint booth. Unfortunately, designing and installing a code-compliant hard walled paint booth represents a huge investment of time, money, and labor. In many cases, it is simply not feasible for a manufacturer to make these permanent renovations to their facility. For example, a permanent hard walled paint booth might require additional venting, which also adds ongoing energy costs of importing air through an air make-up vent to replace the exhausted air. A facility also may be at its EPA limits for exhaust stacks.
How a Retractable Enclosure Can Help With Corrosion Maintenance
A portable retractable enclosure or paint booth from Duroair can be assembled and operational in days, not weeks or months, minimizing downtime for your facility. Our softwall enclosures are ideal for airplane hangars and other open manufacturing spaces where you need to quickly create a separate working environment within a larger building. Our retractable clean rooms and paint booths can also be collapsed down to 20% of their size and stored elsewhere when not in use, freeing up that floor space for other tasks.
The portable, collapsible enclosures offer the same quality of clean air filtration as a permanent hardwalled space. This is achieved by combining the DuroRoom™ with a filtration system, such as the DuroCap™, DuroPure™, DuroDust™ and DuroClean™ into one customizable solution that protects against VOCs, hexavalent chromium, and isocyanates.
Our solutions range from our patented, six-stage, non-vented DuroPure filtration system to the two- or three-stage, vented DuroCap filtration system. The DuroCap solution captures up 99.4% of airborne particulates, meeting NESHAP 319 and is engineered to meet your industry’s airflow requirements from 13,500 CFM to 80,000 CFM and beyond. The DuroPure filtration process offers unbeatable protection by capturing 100% of airborne particulates, gasses, and vapors.
By combining either of these filtration options with our portable DuroRoom, you will be able to conduct the corrosion maintenance that you need to without worrying about contaminating the rest of your facility or exposing your employees to harmful chemicals.
Portable Retractable Enclosures Can Help With Your Corrosion Prevention
If you’re not sure which Duroair solution is right for your corrosion prevention needs, our team will be happy to talk through your specifications and facility needs. Contact one of our industrial clean air experts today to get a free consultation and take the first steps toward making your corrosion prevention safer and more efficient for your entire shop floor.
