HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH
No Chance For Legionella Tina Müller Freudenberg Filtration Technologies, Weinheim, Germany
here is no reason to be alarmist”, said Jürgen Becker, who is globally responsible
© Freudenberg Filtration Technologies
“T
tina.mueller@freudenberg-filter.com
for surface treatment at Freudenberg
Filtration Technologies. Nevertheless, the new version of the Federal Emission Control Act (42nd BImSchV) is causing paint shop operators to fundamentally review their existing exhaust air treatment systems. If wet separators are used to separate the paint overspray, the amendment to the regulations will require stricter inspection and documentation to be carried out. Wet separation systems must now be designed in such a way that they exclude any contamination of the environment by Legionella via the exhaust air. A legally compliant, technically effective and economically efficient alternative is dry paint separation, for example using edrizzi® paint mist separators from Freudenberg Filtration Technologies. For smaller spray booths, the handy boxes are the first choice anyway. Thanks to new concepts from various plant manufacturers, this now also applies to large, permanently high-capacity plants (Fig. 1). To enable risk-free testing, Freudenberg Filtration Technologies will install individually designed demonstration systems directly at the customer’s plant, without having to uninstall the existing wet separation system beforehand. This service is offered in collaboration with renowned plant manufacturers. Caused by Legionella infection, Legionnaire’s disease can be fatal in humans. The pathogen is a waterborne bacterium. The source of infection is often the moist and droplet-laden exhaust air from cooling towers, recooling plants or wet separators. For this reason, the 42nd Ordinance to the Federal Emission Control Act seeks to minimize the risk of infection by microorganisms as much as possible.
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“Wet separation plants are well established in the industry. They allow stationary operation with constant process parameters”, Becker explained. However, these systems have a number of
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N. 51 - MAY/JUNE 2018 - international PAINT&COATING magazine
Figure 1: Example of a paint shop equipped with edrizzi® dry separators.
