Your critical production equipment probably gets all the attention. You just want to know that your dust collection system is doing its job, so you can focus on yours.
What if rather than just sitting there in the corner, doing its thing, your dust collector could help make your job easier?
Well, now it can.
Donaldson’s iCue™ Connected Filtration Technology connects to your dust collector, continuously monitors its operation, and provides real-time performance data that can make your job easier.
It’s not often that a single piece of technology can benefit such a diverse group of manufacturing stakeholders, but that’s exactly what the iCue technology does. Operations/Maintenance, Purchasing, and Environmental Health & Safety professionals will have instant access to information that can help them reduce unplanned downtime, optimize collector efficiency, and confidently track compliance data.
Easier than ever before.
Until recently, monitoring a dust collection system meant manually reading instrument panels, then recording and interpreting the data — time-consuming tasks that may not provide all the information you need to make smart decisions.
Now, the iCue Connected Filtration Technology can handle that monitoring, putting accurate, real-time information at your fingertips to help optimize collector efficiency, reduce unplanned downtime, and simplify compliance documentation.
Data recorded manually can only reflect a point in time, but connected monitoring is continuous, letting you see trends and spot deviations, producing benefits for all stakeholders — Operations / Maintenance, Purchasing, and Environmental Health & Safety.
In addition to helping ensure that your dust collection system is operating properly, the iCue technology can help indicate when filters need replacing — so you can be sure you’re getting maximum life and optimal performance from your filters.
A filter should be replaced when it’s packed with dust and can no longer be pulsed off by the self-cleaning mechanism. When the Differential Pressure (DP) — the drop in pressure as air passes through the filter — exceeds recommended levels, the filter is likely expired.
Operations / Maintenance
Purchasing
Environmental Health & Safety
Many industries have regulations for hazardous dust and fumes, so it’s important to have your air quality tested, establish a baseline concentration, and track particulate levels to remain within targets. A small filter leak can go unnoticed and cause dust to exceed targeted levels.
Operations / Maintenance
Purchasing
Environmental Health & Safety
Most dust collectors have a self-cleaning mechanism that uses compressed air to pulse dust from the filters. If this mechanism is not working, dust can lodge in the filters, causing them to expire prematurely.
Operations / Maintenance
Purchasing
Environmental Health & Safety
A metalworking operation was seeing short filter life (less than six weeks) for unexplained reasons. Their iCue technology data indicated the compressed air pressure was inadequate to pulse-clean the filters. Adjusting the compressed air system extended the average filter life from six weeks to one year, saving $19,703 USD annually in time, parts, and labor.
Insufficient airflow, the velocity of air moving through hoods and ducts into the collector, can leave nuisance dust in breathing zones, while too much airflow can draw in valuable process materials — or potential ignition sources.
Operations / Maintenance
Purchasing
Environmental Health & Safety
In dust collectors with a hopper and conveying system that handle agglomerative powders, humidity can condense the material and cause it to plug the equipment. Filtration stops and heavy dust can quickly back up into the facility’s air.
Operations / Maintenance
Purchasing
Environmental Health & Safety
A livestock feed mill filtered sticky material that frequently plugged the hopper and filled the plant with dust, requiring two hours of downtime and clean-up for every incident. Donaldson’s iCue connected filtration technology provided earlier notice of hopper plugging, reducing the fix time to 15 minutes, avoiding clean-up costs, and saving $5,899 USD per incident.
Like we said, it’s not often that a single piece of technology comes along that can benefit Operations/Maintenance, Purchasing, and Environmental Health & Safety professionals, but that’s exactly what the iCue technology does:
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Environmental Health & Safety |
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Differential Pressure |
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Particulate Concentration |
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Compressed Air Pressure |
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Relative Airflow |
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Hopper Obstruction |
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