CLEANROOM AIR SHOWERS: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

CLEANROOM AIR SHOWERS: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

An air shower is designed to function as a sort of gateway controller between your cleanroom and the rest of the world.

When used properly, an air shower can cut down on a vast majority of potential contaminants and helps ensure that your product remains safe and uncontaminated. 

Today, air showers have become relatively commonplace because of their benefits, and comparatively small price. So what’s the deal with cleanroom air showers, and why does your cleanroom need one?

HOW DOES A CLEANROOM AIR SHOWER WORK?

Well, first let’s start with how a cleanroom air shower works. Essentially, it functions as a high velocity, low pressure, self-contained system. 

To clarify terms, the air shower is the actual high-velocity airflow fan that turns on once the employee is in the room, and the room itself, with dual locking doors, is called the air lock. 

For the sake of brevity, we will refer to the system as a whole as an air shower.

In a one-person air shower, the airlock has two doors that cannot be opened at the same time. 

The employee enters the room from the outside, the doors lock, and then the air shower begins blowing air in what we call a “flapping manner,” or high-velocity streams. 

These streams of air effectively “scrub” the employee of any lingering particulate, blowing them to the low-pressure side of the room.

 Typically, an employee will be cleaned for 4 to 8 seconds, and then will wait for an additional 2-4 seconds for the room to be purged of the contaminants. 

The second door, leading to the actual cleanroom, will then be unlocked, allowing the employee contaminant free entry into the production area.

Most smaller cleanrooms equipped with an air shower simply implement a one-person air shower, but cleanroom air showers do exist for many employees at once. 

These larger air showers are built kind of like tunnels and are beneficial for operations that have a shift change of 30-40 employees at a time.