Compliance LEV News

An LEV Solution with Environmental and Economic Benefits

Our client had a very large wet dust collector sited outdoors which pulled air from 3 booths in which titanium grinding took place.

Titanium dust is explosive hence the requirement for a wet

dust collector, where the sparkrisk is mitigated immediately as it hits the water.

As an environmentally aware company here at Compliance LEV we are always looking for ways to reduce impact on the environment, save energy and save money and running costs for our clients.

We began with a site survey and noticed right away that our client was only using a single booth 80% of the time whilst requiring to run the big external dust collector to get the single booth its required airflow… meanwhile 3 booths worth of warm condition air was being cast outside of the building!

Our solution was to decommission the large outdoor unit and replace it with 3 localized internal systems. This would mean each booth could operate individually and only run it’s own dust collector.

Environmental and Economic benefits of this solution:

1. Only run the much smaller Fan and motor as and when required, reducing environmental impact, emissions and energy costs.
2. The systems return their air (thanks to our bespoke after filter system) and the buildings heated and conditioned air is retained preventing heating air twice!
3. We removed the productions single point of failure, if one system were to become un-usable for any reason the process can now move to a neighbouring booth.

Result – client saves money, environmental impact and carbon footprint is reduced.

Compliance LEV: Measures to Mitigate Impact of Covid19 in the Workplace

It is possible to catch COVID-19 either by breathing in droplets coughed out or exhaled by a person with COVID-19 or by touching eyes, nose or mouth after handling a contaminated object. All sections of society, including businesses and employees must play a role if we are to stop the spread of this disease. Compliance LEV therefore identify the business activities that could expose workers or others and follow the practical steps suggested below by the World Health Organisation to prevent spread of COVID-19.  Our fleet has underwent a deep clean and sanitisation and our LEV Engineers are fully briefed on safety when testing LEV systems in all industries such as aviation, welding. wood dust, RCS (Respirable Crystalline Silica), Titanium, flour and bakery dust, paint fume, & metallisation.

Practical steps will vary dependent on nature and location of industry, exposure to infection, supply chains, etc.  The following steps and measures are far from exhaustive and will constantly be reviewed and updated.

The following basic infection prevention measures, drawn from the WHO, can protect individuals from getting sick and spreading sickness:

-Promote and enforce frequent handwashing and respiratory hygiene.

-Wear a facial covering and/or face visor.

-Discourage touching eyes, nose, mouth.

-Ensure workplace is clean and hygienic, and regularly disinfect surfaces and objects, use of hand santistizer.

-Advise employees to stay at home when sick and to seek medical advice if they have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, loss of taste or smell.

-Practice social distancing where recommended.

-Stay informed and follow advice from international health organisations such as the WHO and your national health organisationand government.

A Temporary Installation – A Long Term Solution.

Our client had a single large metal dressing booth.  The dust collector was highly energy inefficient, we wrote a business case and carried out energy saving calculations to prove a less than 5 year ROI.  This system was also a single point of failure in a critical process line.

Following Lean excercises with our in-house practitioner the descision was made to manufacture two separate systems. We installed one titanium explosive dust system  in a temporary location  allowing the operators to continue, whilst removal of the inefficient wet dust collector was carried out.

Continuity of production of these key aerospace parts was key to the projects success.

These two dry explosive dust extraction LEV systems were built, commisioned and in service in 5 days including all electrical works.

The result – A future proofing LEV solution!

Face velocity, duct velocity and system parameters were all above design guidance of HSG 258 and Coshh regulations.

Compliance LEV are here to help: New client unsure of legal requirements.

We are often approached by new clients  where the client has new equipment or processes and are not sure if LEV is required and if it is, what type.

At Compliance LEV we are always happy to talk things through with existing and new clients and even carry out a site visit if required.

COSHH (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health) are government regulations and are criminal law. The first stage you must follow is to carry out a “suitable and sufficient risk assessment” of your process, we can help regard your LEV.  Local Exhaust Ventilation systems are classed as an “Engineering control” under COSHH.

This particular application involved small chemical cleaning tanks where the emitted fumes were minimal.

We reviewed the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for the chemicals and followed relevant guidance.

The process was taking place inside a small room with general ventilation linking various offices and rooms.
General ventilation is not suitable to carry fume as it is possible that it can carry and spread the fumes into other parts of the building exposing other staff to breathing it in.  In addition, exposure to the fume can take place before general ventilation takes place, whereas LEV captures the contaminant at source before the operator breathes it in.

Compliance LEV designed bespoke enclosing hoods using stainless steel material to resist chemical corrosion, further enclosed using rubber strip curtains.
We specified the fume collectors with activated carbon filters making the returned air clean and free from contaminant and safe to breath.

Result – a fully compliant client, who will now be confident that if HSE turn up to audit that all their legal obligations have been met, all the way from initial risk assessments to installation of suitable engineering controls.

Every installation by Compliance LEV includes a hand over and full system logbook to meet HSE guidance document HSG258.

Note – Compliance LEV can supply logbooks and create SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) retrospectively where these are missing from existing LEV Systems, meaning  you are fully compliant.