Fan Efficiency for Dust Collectors

Industrial fans have a special job to do when used in a dust collection application. They need to get the dust-laden air past the filters in the dust collector baghouse. The system pressure varies based on how “dirty” the filters are, and you can adjust the fan speed accordingly. Properly adjusting the speed can reduce your overall power consumption, but that depends on whether or not you place the pressure gauge in the right spot.

Pressure Gauge Location is Critical for Fan Efficiency

For many dust collection applications, common and best practice is to control the fan with a variable frequency drive (VFD). But for optimal fan efficiency, you need to take another step. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s talk about why.

Air Pressure in the Baghouse

The baghouse is the central component to many industrial dust collection systems, as it collects dust from the air the fan is pulling or pushing through the system. Baghouses contain filters to collect the dust. Similar to your air conditioner and furnace at home, these filters start out clean and get dirtier over time. As that happens, the resistance increases, requiring higher fan speed to move the air through the filters.

Pressure Gauge at the Baghouse Inlet

Often, the VFD is run from the control room based on a loop analyzing pressure in the system. Therefore, the critical decision affecting fan efficiency: where to put the pressure gauge that drives that control?

Putting the pressure gauge at the INLET of your baghouse will maintain a constant level at that point. This allows the fan speed to fluctuate up or down as dictated by how clean or dirty the filters in the baghouse are.

In summary, the cleaner the filters, the slower the speed. The dirtier the filters, the faster the speed. And you maintain a constant horsepower in your motor, all resulting in optimal fan efficiency.

Hear it from the Application Engineer

Senior Application Engineer Chet White takes less than a minute to explain more in this 1¼ minute video.

When you’re ready to start your project, reach out and connect with one of our application engineers to discuss the details of your specification.

Related Content on Industrial Fan Applications

There are a number of considerations affecting fan operations for different applications. Here are additional videos that might be of interest as you think about your application:

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