Arresting Fugitive Dusts
From our Friends at: Occupational Health and Safety
Arresting Fugitive Dusts
The use of vacuum conveyors to transfer materials between processes improves indoor air quality while increasing efficiency and the bottom line.
Most often when hearing the term fugitive dust, one thinks of combustible fugitive dust. However, fugitive dust is simply a particulate matter that becomes entrained in ambient air (usually by wind or human interaction). Respirable dust particles are invisible to the naked eye and universally considered to be 10 microns or less in size. Of all the harmful respirable dusts, silica gets the most attention, perhaps because it is present in so many products and nearly all industries, and it can lead to incurable lung disease and death. Silica is an anti-caking agent in food, pharmaceutical and supplement products in metal powders, paint and coatings formulations and in a host of other materials.
Respirable dust hazards in these industries are not limited to silica exposure. Food flavorings, fine metal powders and active pharmaceutical ingredients contain other substances that are toxic to the human body when inhaled. Even some inert respirable dusts have the ability to cause irritation or sensitivity. Across the board, regulatory agencies favor closed systems as an engineering control to mitigate respirable dust exposure that occurs during manual dumping or transfer of materials. Vacuum conveying systems contain respirable dust from source to destination in a closed system preventing respirable dusts from escaping into the plant environment in the first place.
Vacuum conveyors are inherently safer and more efficient than manual transfer of materials and some of the most common reasons facilities implement them is to meet increased demand, mitigate ergonomic, fall and fugitive dust hazards, reclamation of expensive materials and improving product quality through precision ingredient delivery.
Whatever the objective, the outcome of implementing vacuum conveyors to transfer powder and bulk solids is increased safety, improved indoor air quality and a better bottom line with proper design. Although vacuum conveyors are relatively simple systems consisting of five basic components, working with an expert manufacturer that deals exclusively with vacuum technology and how that technology interacts with materials ensures that potential challenges are anticipated and addressed prior to equipment delivery. Every customer likes to do things a little bit differently, so there is no one size fits all approach to vacuum conveying. Specific components of each system are selected based on a customer’s objectives and material requirements.
Experienced vacuum technology experts engineer systems from their storied knowledge base without having to reinvent the wheel. As a result, they are able to present customers with different options that allow them to determine the level of automation they want and calculate ROI accordingly. More automation costs more upfront, but it costs less in the long run due to reduced labor costs or an increased ability to run more batches in an hour if the system is automated, or it is eliminating an ergonomic or safety issue and the costs associated with an accident. Product quality can also be a factor with less waste and better customer satisfaction.
The following are several examples of how vacuum conveyors solved common industry challenges specific to customers’ needs.
It is important to note that when working with pharmaceutical powders, silica, lead, asbestos, beryllium, hexavalent chrome and other potentially hazardous respirable dusts, a HEPA secondary filter cartridge, rated 99.97 percent efficient at 0.3 micron is utilized with vacuum conveying systems. When a noodle manufacturer made the switch from handling 50-pound bags of flour to handling 2000-pound bulk bags, an older pressure-based conveyor system, which transported 20 tons of very fine flour per week from a hopper through a volumetric feeder to a mixer, no longer satisfied the company’s needs.
In pressure-based systems material is pushed through the conveying line, and if there are any leaks in the system dust escapes outwardly into the environment making a mess and exposing workers to potential dust hazards. With vacuum conveyors material is pulled through the conveying line, and in the event of a leak, the leak is inward, containing dust within the closed system. The primary objective of the noodle producer was to accommodate new super sacs and eliminate the need for workers to climb up to a large hopper to fill it manually, preventing slip and fall hazards as well as exposure to respirable dust.
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