Fresh air and shop filtration

[mcooley]

Anyone have recent experience with the new updated line of Laguna Cyclone dust collectors? I was looking at the P Flux for example.

Also, I am curious if anyone has a good system for getting fresh air into the shop from outside? I have a garage door and one other door but it would be best to have a low-speed fan that can bring in air without robbing the space of its heat during the winter. The shop is newly built and is about 1,000 sf with a Mitsubishi Mini-Split for heating and cooling.

Here in the mountains we have radon and so that solution may be part of the airflow solution, once we have the space tested.

Thanks

 

[agarwalsa]

I am curious about the Laguna P-Flux as well. Its size, build quality, mobility, bin release and other features all look great but I don't understand if there are different HEPA standards being used by Laguna. Laguna claims 99.2% filtration @ 0.4 microns whereas the HEPA standard is 99.7% @ 0.3microns. Not sure if I am not reading this right but that looks a lot worse than HEPA standards yet it is certified as HEPA.

 

[Gregor]

looks a lot worse than HEPA standards yet it is certified as HEPA.

There are different levels for HEPA, higher % at lower size is better.

You could still add another filtration step (ionizer based, foam style micro filter, air washer) at the outlet of your extractor to get rid of the very fine stuff that might come out of there. As the bulk of the work has already been completed at that point a specialized filter will last quite long till cleaning/replacement is needed...

 

[mcooley]

All helpful info, thanks. Another reason why I don't think any of these systems should prevent us from still using our 3M masks etc.

 

[JBag09]

I just order a JDS cyclone a week ago. I was looking at the Laguna, but the models I compared, the JDS had 40 less CFM (hardly a deal breaker to me anyway), and was $100 less. They also come with the motor to turn the paddle inside the filter after shutting it down, where the Laguna that was a $300 add on.https://jdstools.com/product/2hp-cyclone-2100-ckv/
With these types of DCs, they return the air back to the shop with very minimal dust so you shouldn’t need any type fresh air intake.
The mini-splits are the bomb [emoji1360]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gregor]

They also come with the motor to turn the paddle inside the filter after shutting it down...
With these types of DCs, they return the air back to the shop with very minimal dust [emoji1360]

The 'minimal' in 'very minimal dust' can refer to the particle size that is returned back into the shop - since the smaller the particles the worse it gets (from a health standpoint, as the smaller the particle the easier it is for you to aspirate it deeper) it could be an idea to not turn the paddle on a regular basis.

The issue with (different model but same working principle) I ran into was that 'turning the paddle' destroyed the fine dust impactation on the filter that was actually needed (with the filter can we had) to reach an acceptable level of filtration for the very fine particle sizes. Our finding had been that we needed a certain load on the filter surface (to close the pores even further) to get the separation to a level where the fine material fraction was actually collected - a freshly cleaned filter was counter-productive and way less effective.
Also the regular cleaning cycle massively reduced the durability of the filter through the wear and tear from the repeated mechanical agitation.

I hope YMMV, but in case you restart the device (after the filter had been loaded and a cleaning cycle actually did something) and it emits a puff of dust while spinning up (or the area around the outlet filter gets dirty with fine dust over time) you should think again about feeding the exhaust air directly back to your shop - I solved my issue by adding an additional housing around the collector with a large surface filter to trap the fine dust that escaped.

This has some basic information about how such filters work, possibly it is of interest to someone.