Dust frequently poses a significant issue across numerous industries: coal dust in the air at loading docks, asphalt dust while producing concrete, substantial iron ore dust at mining sites, sugar dust, and similar types. Sugar dust poses a significant problem for the sugar industry, leading to considerable revenue losses because of the final product being reduced to sugar dust. The presence of sugar particles in the air leads to a layer of sugar granules on various surfaces that can interfere with the production process.

The common way of removing dry sugar dust from the air is with dry dust collectors, like baghouse filters and cartridge filters. However, the use of these systems is not the ideal solution for sugar dust scrubbing and possesses numerous disadvantages.

Dry dust in the air increases the risk of combustion as it acts as fuel for an explosion. Other elements necessary for an explosion are an enclosure, dispersion, oxygen, and an ignition source. The ignition source may be provided by a production process in the form of a spark, by construction work in the form of a welding or grinding spark, or by a careless worker smoking a cigarette; the other factors are present inside the dry dust collector. The environment inside the baghouse or cartridge filters creates the perfect conditions for the combustion to occur. Sugar dust carries a static charge and can arc inside the air chamber, which causes ignition.

The explosions that are a result of the sugar dust presence in the air are not a rare occasion – the incidents occur often enough for government regulations to be broadened.

Wet scrubbers can overcome all of the disadvantages of traditional dry dust collectors (explosion potential, high temperatures, moisture in the gas stream).  They do not create the environment in which combustion might occur; wet scrubbers can handle high temperatures of inlet gas stream.

Most wet air scrubbers suffer from clogging due to the sludge that is created after the sugar dust mixes with water. This mixture is very sticky, it causes build-up inside the chamber and stops the scrubbing process. Multi-vortex wet air scrubber can process sugar dust without being clogged due to the high speeds of microturbulence vortices that are used to scrub the inlet gas. Tests show that a multi-vortex wet air scrubber can handle 250 g. of sugar per 1 liter of water without any issues.

Over the past years several sugar dust explosions have happened at sugar producing and storing facilities. Sugar dust induces explosions can be very dangerous and cause significant damage to both the facility and personnel.

Dry dust collectors are not appropriate for sugar dust as they get clogged easily by sugar. Moreover, dry dust collectors create a perfect environment for sugar dust combustion, as dust accumulates in high concentrations in an enclosed space. Wet air scrubbers are effective against dust and don’t create an environment that poses a threat of sugar dust explosion.

A new type of wet air scrubber, multi-vortex wet air scrubber provides improved air treatment quality and can be used for both particle matter and gas collection. The treatment quality of multi-vortex wet air scrubber is generally 99.95-99.99% for both types of pollutants. Besides high efficiency, multi-vortex wet air scrubber possesses several advantages over conventional wet scrubbers – multi-vortex wet air scrubbers are compact, omnivorous, eco-friendly, economical, and low-maintenance.

If you are interested in purchasing multi-vortex wet air scrubber, please contact us at info@rdwd.tech