Improving Air Quality Keeps Equipment Humming

A common fiscal goal among companies is protecting assets and ensuring their longevity. Capital purchase protection is a key component to a strong bottom line. Investing in clean air helps deliver on this goal.

Improving air quality in a facility entails installing dust or fume collectors in a systematic way to treat all of the air, not just problem spots. Whether the solution is a source capture unit or an ambient capture solution, there are many options available. For over two decades, RoboVent has designed, manufactured and installed these air quality solutions.

When a company improves the air quality in a facility, the equipment in that facility functions better. It is less prone to breakdowns and requires less cleaning. Your equipment also lasts longer, which is a major boon to budgets. Longer-lasting equipment not only means less money spent on capital, it also means less time spent on procurement, installation and training on that new equipment.

Cleaner Air Leads to Sustainability

An often overlooked method of achieving sustainability goals is to improve air quality. When a manufacturing facility implements a comprehensive dust or fume control system, the benefits that result deliver serious sustainability impacts. For example, a new dust collector such as RoboVent’s Senturion Series system uses far less energy than older equipment—far less than even its competitors. Cutting energy use is always a leading sustainability goal. This system also requires less maintenance, meaning the burden on your staff drops.

Investing in air quality brings serious environmental impacts, as well. Many facilities currently vent their contaminated air to the outside. By treating your air—filtering it and recycling it back into the facility—you prevent this pollution to your immediate environment and your community. The impacts within the facility are of course tangible, as well. Cleaner air leads to healthier employees, and few things contribute more to sustainability than healthy, productive employees.

Improving air quality brings financial and legal benefits, as well, which helps your company be sustainable in a very literal sense. By saving energy, you obviously save money on utilities. The cost savings from a dust collector such as RoboVent’s Senturion Series will appear immediately, but, more importantly, those savings can be planned for over the life of the equipment. From a legal perspective, improving air quality ensures that your manufacturing facility is complying with regulations. Not only does this allow your managers to focus on what’s important—production—but it also protects you from possible downsides of noncompliance: fines, lawsuits and so on.

Efficient Measures to Meet Sustainability Goals

A key component of sustainability policy is a reduction in energy use. Fortunately, implementing new air quality measures can lead to such a reduction. For example, RoboVent’s dust collectors are designed to use less energy. RoboVent’s electric motors are energy efficient, and our ePad Control Panel helps monitor equipment and make energy-saving adjustments as needed. The AutoSaver feature allows your system to rest when welders are idle but turns it back on when the welder strikes an arc, avoiding unnecessary energy use. Working with RoboVent’s industry-leading engineers to improve your air quality can lead to significant energy savings. These benefits are, of course, in addition to the many other benefits that come from cleaner air.

Energy savings can derive from cleaner air in other ways, as well. Putting your dust collectors into a networked array can create new efficiencies. For example, RoboVent’s Grid Configuration connects your dust collectors into a system that needs only 70% of the airflow that the individual units need. Over time, this configuration saves significant amounts of energy and money. Another RoboVent product designed to save energy is the eDrive Automatic VFD. The eDrive monitors airflow and automatically adjusts the motor RPM to compensate for filter loading. Energy peaks and valleys are evened out, and energy use is cut by around 40%. As with any sustainability option, a company must weigh the return on investment (ROI). The ROI on the eDrive varies from 8 to 14 months, depending on energy costs.

One of the fastest ways to save energy and meet sustainability goals is to end the practice of venting contaminated air to the outside. A comprehensive dust collection system will filter your air and return clean air back to your facility. This avoids the need for make-up air and to spend money heating or cooling that air. If you are venting to the outside in winter, your warm air gets exhausted along with your contaminants. Fresh air brought in from the outside needs to be heated. Likewise, in the summer your air-conditioned air gets vented out with the contaminants, forcing you to cool the make-up air. Both of these practices add significantly to your utility bill.

Are you exhausting your profits? Use our handy calculators to estimate your heating/cooling costs due to ventilation.

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