Pressurization and Purging

Pressurization:

Pressurization in certain enclosures, rooms and buildings is a high priority of many users.  The purpose of pressurization is to create a positive pressure inside a space so that air flows out of all apertures, such as open doors and cracks around closed ones, and will not let in airborne contaminants such as dust, sand, and corrosive or dangerous gases.  However, many users do not have ready or economical access to air clean-enough to use to pressurize a space.  Some installations use media or other types of filtration to clean the pressurizing air, but with this approach come the many costs and complications of replacing and maintaining filters.  For some users, maintaining and replacing filters can become so expensive that they do not pressurize their enclosures at all because they find it less expensive to clean, or even replace, the equipment that they want to protect.

The ACB:

Air-Cleaning Blowers^TM (ACBs) can cut maintenance, power and other operating costs in these situations significantly.  In fact, sometimes the savings become great enough to justify pressurizing and ventilating enclosures and other applications that users could not protect economically using any other type of filtration and pressurization system.

The Air Cleaning Blowers work by pulling that dirty air into their housings like any other fans would.  The impeller and housing are specially designed to use the momentum of the contaminants to separate them from the air (or almost any other gas) and fling them toward the outside of the housing and eject them, most commonly back into the atmosphere from where they came.  The clean air continues toward the application such as ventilation or pressurization.  ACBs accomplish all this without any type of filter elements, sheets, cartridges, bags or other media to maintain.

Media filters remove contaminants from air and other gases by stopping and collecting them.  As a result, they all clog and need maintenance and, sooner or later, replacement.  In addition, as they clog, media filters and air purifiers increasingly impede the flow of air.  When they do, the blower has to work harder and consume more electricity or other power to maintain the same airflow and air pressure at the application.  In contrast, because they do not trap debris, ACBs do not clog.  Without clogging, the filter maintenance is almost eliminated, and, consequently, so is deferred maintenance.  Perhaps more important, particularly to designers of the systems, when ACBs supply the air moving and air cleaning, they eliminate the fluctuations in airflow, air pressure and power consumption, which makes it much easier to predict and calculate the air-systems’ performances, and therefore, to design optimal systems.

Pressurization and ACB Testing

ACBs can be made safe for use in the presence of hazardous dusts and gases of almost all types, both Division/Zone 1 or Division/Zone 2.  Hence, they can be used to purge and pressurize control rooms and other enclosures in petro-chemical plants, munitions storage and manufacturing and grain elevators.

Our ACBs were tested independently at an internationally-recognized filter-testing laboratory to establish their effectiveness.  The testing found that standard models remove up to 98%+ of the mass of dust and other particles from the air.  The laboratory results show that they remove virtually all particles larger than 10 microns and about 40% of the particles down to 3 microns from the air.  The smallest particles most people can see are about 50 microns.  Models under development will consistently remove sub-micron contaminants.  Hence, they can be used in data centers and clean

rooms, either as the sole ventilator and air cleaner or as the blower and pre-filter for the space.

Originally developed to work in harsh environments such as steel, mining and fertilizer plants, the Air Cleaning Blower^TM can help no matter why you need purging and/or pressurization, or where.  Our ACBs are so effective that they are being used today by the US Military in the Middle East to keep air conditioners cooling, even in sandstorms.

Typical Applications:

Offices and laboratories associated with dusty facilities — Mines, foundries, grain processors, storage silos, gravel pits

Control rooms and pulpits — oil refineries, petro-chemical plants, steel, aluminum and other metal-processing plants

Motor-control centers and other electrical enclosures – bulk-product processing equipment, salt mines,

Motor and other types of equipment rooms — gypsum and cement plants, mines

Analyzer buildings — Petro-chemical plant, steel and aluminum plants, mines, foundries

Loading, unloading and container-filling stations — Grain elevators, road construction, bulk-product plants