Summer is approaching fast and if last year is any indication, we are in store for some very warm days. While warm days own their own aren't necessarily harmful, the dust that can be airborne from different activities during warm days can be.
1. What is Dust Control?
Dust control is the term used for systems that either prevent dust from being airborne, or reduce the amount already airborne.
Generally speaking, dust control comes in many forms, with the use of many different solutions such as the use of petroleum, synthetic polymers and what we are going to be discussing today: water. Dust control using water employs two techniques: Prevention and Suppression.
Dust Prevention
Dust Prevention, like it's name suggests, is a method of preventing dust being airborne. It is most common in construction sites or areas where activities, such as material transferring, kicks up large amounts of dust. Dust prevention systems generally take the approach of low pressure systems with large amounts of water to "pre-wet" material. This weighs down dust particles, making them much less likely to become airborne. Most common overtop of conveyer belts transporting material, the nozzles are positioned close to the material to cover as much area as possible.
Dust Suppression
Dust suppression on the other hand, deals a lot more with already airborne dust particles, or dust that is considerably smaller and harder to weigh down. This is achieved by emulating a mist of water with very high pressure systems. Unlike prevention, this solution uses much less water and is very effective in dealing with the dust that is known to cause health issues.
2. Why is dust control important?
Health and Safety
There are many reasons to control airborne dust. At the top of the list is the health of workers or anyone who is around a relatively dusty area for long periods of time. Fine dust can settle in the lungs and cause severe health issues.
Visibility is also impacted when dust control is not implemented and can become a hazard to the crew working on site. Dust prevention/suppressions systems combat this by keeping the amount of dust airborne to a minimal amount.
Vegetation
Large amounts of dust being kicked up can greatly harm any vegetation in the area. This is due to the dust affecting important aspects such as photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration within a plant/crop.
Economical Benefits
Although Dust Control is an added cost, there are many economical benefits that come along with it. First of all, less road maintenance. Specially on roads that are not paved, having a dust control system reduces the wear the road experiences, leading to less maintenance costs. Airborne dust can also reduce the driving speed due to visibility, increasing travel time and fuel costs.
Second, heavy dust creation in areas such as transferring of material lead to not only product loss, but also have a stock piling effect and can cause wear and tear on machine parts such as conveyer belts.
Having a Dust Control system can reduce the financial cost of all these problems and in the long run, have a positive economical benefit for companies.
3. Dust Control Solutions
As mentioned earlier, there are many different dust control solutions. Many large scale project require complex and expensive dust control systems, but in some areas, a simple sprayer system is all that is needed.
At BARR, we focus on multi-purpose dust control and wet down spraying systems that can be tailored to your specific needs. Our systems are centered around simplicity, effectiveness, and affordability.
For residential property owners, small farms, or smaller construction sites, we offer a compact dust control multi-purpose skid unit that can be mounted on to an ATV.
These skid units come in a variety of sizes, and have many interchangeable parts, such as the tank size, pump size, hose attachments, and sprayer bar size/output. Mounting these units onto skids give us the unique feature of making the unit portable, and interchangeable throughout the seasons. We make these skids to fit ATVS, Pickup Trucks, Flatbed Trucks, Dump trucks and more.
The best part of these dust control systems is that they are multi-purpose, they can also be configured for brine application during the winter, emergency firefighting if fitted with hose attachments during the summer and water holding tanks during any off-seasons.
For our larger scale operations customers, we also offer self-loading options for higher capacity applications. We also take your application into account and create custom solutions specific your needs.
For a quick demonstration, checkout our YouTube Video:
Our full list of Dust Control Solutions can be found here: