Dust and powder

Dust damage often occurs in connection with building or reconditioning, where materials are whirled up in the air and unintentionally end on surfaces of technical equipment. This secondary damage, which ranges from excessive wearing of moving parts to overheating and potentially fire, depends on the actual type of dust.

Fire damage
Dust from building activity such as concrete, gypsum, wood and other building materials will cover all horizontal surfaces, and if in addition the air humidity is high, it will adhere to all surfaces. The ventilating plant in the room or the return air-cooling in equipment such as PCs only makes the contamination worse. The risk caused by this type of damage is primarily reduced cooling of electronic and electric plants. In case of heavy dust contamination heating may result in fire. In the case of fine-grained dust, the fire can be explosive.

Corrosion
Some types of dust are capable of conducting electricity. This is for example the case in relation to carbon dust, which is formed by combustion and, metal dust, which is formed when grinding. In current-carrying apparatus and plant this type of dust can cause short-circuit and electrical arcing. When analysing dust from production plants in the food industry it often contains salt which is corrosive.
Powder damage from AB and ABC fire extinguishers frequently causes secondary damage when used to extinguish the fire or because they are used in acts of vandalism. The powder is a hygroscopic product, which attracts humidity to the surface and can result in the corrosion of metal surfaces.

Excessive wear of plant/equipment
Secondary damage caused by dust and powder damage is an often neglected cause of damage on movable parts such as ball bearings and axles. Fine-grained dust can act as a polishing powder and shorten the lifetime on moving parts in the equipment.

AREPAs service
Our choice of first aid is decided in each case. It is important that contamination is reduced so that it does not spread out into other parts of the building by means of draught or when blowing the dust away. At the same time dry cleaning of electronics must be handled with care due to electro-static sensitive devices. Generally an air humidity of 35% is recommended.
Tests have shown that, for particle size of <50µm, purely dry process will often only remove 10% of the contamination. Therefore a wet process must be used in these cases.

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