A recent survey conducted on the auto industry manufacturing personnel and executives has concluded that any downtime in production can cost $22,000 per minute on average. A study performed that had similar parameters had discovered that the equipment that can calculate the cost of downtime will most likely be much lower than the actual by at least 300%. And given the current situation, consider that whenever the company’s industrial dust collector suffers a breakdown, it will likely always take all the systems associated with it down. Clearly, in quite so many facilities, these industrial dust collectors which are used for pollution control must function continuously. Any deterioration in operation can results in an unavoidable shut down unless there is a back up dust collector. This will affect the entirety of the process and even the health of the current facility it is designed to depollute. Knowing that downtime will cost the tens of thousands per minute in almost any case, we will now be able to see that these expense will far outweigh the average costs to maintain the dust collector thoroughly.
The cost of downtime per hour or shift, which are measured by the thousands, when taken into account, will make the cost of properly maintaining an industrial dust collector less expensive.
There is a caveat however is that while many facilities spend quite a few if there are actually any resources to preventative maintenance for their dust collectors despite the important role that they play for the a faultless operation. This article will present 3 tips that can assist you in preventing any downtime caused by dust collectors in your industrial facility.
Avoid Damaging Your Bags through Abrasion
Abrasion will likely happen whenever the dust that enters the bags impact it at a high volume or high velocity. It can also likely occur because of the physical contact between the filters and other parts of the unit like a filter crashing against another filter, the filter cage rubbing with the filter, and others. This is the main cause of early bag degradation and will then leak which require a shutdown to find the damage and replace the part.
To avoid abrasion from dust going into the filters, you can employ the use of baffle plates, which will allow distribution of the incoming air more evenly across the surface area of the tubes and will slow it down which will then cause the majority of the dust particles to fall out before even reaching the filters. Furthermore, the correct inlet design will also prevent the air from impacting the bags upon entry directly. And finally, in some arbitrary cases, the use of pleated filter technology can push the filters up and out of the trajectory of the incoming dust laden air dust which will then prove a larger drop out zone to allow for the air to slow down and larger particles to fall out.
Keep Changing Sets of Bags and Keep From Endless On Spot Changing
A quite common activity that most industrial workers do, but an obvious mistake is to try to avoid replacing complete sets of filters and instead only replacing one filter or a few more filters as they start leaking. Instead of being a cost-saving measure, in fact, this will create substantial amounts of downtime which we have discussed can actually be more costly. Additionally, this raises the overall effect of dust leakage. If the leaks are not discovered early on, this can escalate into a situation where maintenance personnel are constantly plugging the small holes rather than seeing a smooth running operation in their airways.
There are a few times when new filters can even be more prone to failing. This is due to having a new filter which goes into the middle of a group of trodden, dustier, more seasoned filters, the lower filter effectiveness will cause more air to zoom through it and other surrounding filters. Thus the newly installed filters that was supposed to fix the problem will be the ones who will feel the grunt of the of the passing dusty air and will be the first ones to break.
The rule of thumb in replacing the filters in your industrial dust collector is that if you have spot changed more than a tenth of the total bags in a unit, you will be better off replacing the entire set. This will avoid the the filters from malfunctioning one by one and save you more money in the long run.
Constant Monitoring through Sensors and Software System
Another option that is available is the use of monitoring software and hardware systems for your industrial dust collector. This is one of the best methods that would prevent downtime that is currently being employed by most in the industry. The usual system can help detect and prevent downtime simply by tracking both early bag failure and end of useful service life bag failure. By properly installing the system and providing the correct information, operators can receive alerts that actually predict a leak even before it has any chance of occuring. This is considered an advanced warning system that is offered as a feature in most industrial monitoring systems. Impending failures through carefully crafted risk analysis models can help in preventing further damages that could have been prevented. The manageable risks can be addressed at the next available maintenance outage. Furthermore, catching the leaks at an earlier time will result to them to less likely spread to other nearby filters and less repair work to bring the unit back up and thus limiting the needed down time. And as an added benefit, when a leak does happen industrial technicians can save time searching for the damage that need repairing because the monitoring system can easily pinpoint the problem in the industrial dust collector system. This will allow the team to create a plan for the fix even before manual inspection.
