DCE Writes New Chapter in Dust Control at the Little Red Book Company
Thurmaston, England — Dust control specialist, DCE, has recently finished another chapter in its successful,
long-running partnership with the Little Red Book Company (LRBC), a Hertfordshire-based recycler of printer and
toner cartridges. As part of a major expansion project at LRBC's Hemel Hempstead plant, DCE has designed and installed a
new dust control system to effectively extract and collect potentially hazardous toner dust generated by five new
cartridge cleaning booths.
A key element in LRBC's process is the removal of toner dust from used units prior to remanufacturing.
Free-flowing in its nature, toner dust can present a hazard when it forms a dust cloud. Effective dust control is
therefore essential in the cleaning booth area. Having worked successfully with LRBC in the past, DCE was the natural choice
to meet the company's increased requirements for dust control.
"Collecting toner dust successfully from the cleaning booth environment presents a number of challenges for any
dust control company," explains Andy Mayfield, LRBC's R&D/Technical Research Manager. "DCE understand these
problems and has, as always, provided a practical, efficient and safe solution to meet our needs. That's why DCE remains our first
choice in dust control". DCE designed and installed the new high efficiency dust collection system for LRBC to fully satisfy
the requirements of occupational safety regulations.
The project involved installation of a complete dust control system including a DCE unit collector, ductwork
and tailor-made capture hoods. The heart of the new system is a UMA 75B unit from DCE's highly successful Unimaster
range, which is designed to achieve an extraction velocity of 2m/sec at source from each of the five new cleaning booths.
Contaminated air is drawn through ductwork to the DCE Unimaster's filter bags at a rated airflow of
4200m3/hr. The dust is retained on the outer surface of special anti-static filter media, which is used on the project to eliminate the risk
of any dust particle penetration. Periodically, the airflow is discontinued to allow the unit's bag shaker cleaning system
to operate and remove toner dust from the media surface into the unit's collection bin for easy disposal. The
collector's secondary filter then assures the cleanliness of the air before it is discharged to atmosphere. The DCE Unimaster at
LRBC also includes a number of explosion relief features designed to minimize the possible dangers of dust explosion.
DCE is the leading international name in the industrial emissions control business, providing a full range of services
in dust control, centralized vacuum cleaning and oil mist elimination. These services include site consultation, design,
installation, commissioning, spare parts, service and maintenance for any industrial site. DCE is part of the industrial environmental
control group at Invensys plc which has operations in the United Kingdom, North America, Australia, South Africa, Spain,
Benelux, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and China.
The company website can be accessed at www.btrenvironmental.co.uk.
This article originally appeared in the July 1999 issue of Recharger.