Containment Booth

A semi-enclosed containment booth is available for testing of sprays that might generate significant misting, or for use with spray materials that need to be moderately contained. The system is not airtight, but allows nozzles to operate without contaminating the surrounding lab. 

Containment Booth Overview
The containment booth is outfitted with an industrial strength ventilation system. It draws air from within the chamber, passes the air+spray through a HEPA filter, and returns it to ambient. The containment booth has a built-in three-axis traverse and is capable of accommodating fairly expansive test arrangements. This booth has no formal containment rating, but provides a method to collect and contain sprays with many fine droplets that would not naturally migrate onto the floor and could cause a ‘fog’ within the spray area.

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Benefits of the Containment Booth

The containment booth is a versatile unit providing a large feature set with minimal limitations. The removable Plexiglas panels allow for testing of large sprays with various fluids. The unit is ideal for sprays prone to excessive misting and pulls the air within the booth uniformly down into the evacuation system intake, which is located near the floor. The incorporated windows and extra-wide door allow for flexibility in the experimental setup by permitting access for heated systems, higher throughput pumps, agitation tanks and other necessary systems. 

The containment unit is built with measurement in mind and can accommodate Phase Doppler Interferometer (PDI) and/or laser diffraction instruments. Nozzle positioning can be carefully controlled using the booth’s built-in Yaskawa motion control system. The programmable traverse system features three degrees of freedom and global positioning precision to within 1 millimeter. 

The attached HEPA filter has a custom-built duct system allowing the use of either the built-in evacuation system, which encloses test space inside the booth, or ventilation hoses for isolated applications. Various dust particulate and mists are collected through the industrial filters, or the airflow can be re-routed outside for release.

Examples of Containment Booth Testing for Customers

The containment unit provides a versatile location for experiments requiring moderate containment of mists and vapors. Below are two example uses of the containment booth.

  • Fog Control
         A customer concerned with wall wetting, was interested in measuring spray plume size, drop size and velocity of a SprayDry® nozzle. The spray statistics were acquired using the customer’s mixture and a Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) was installed within the containment booth. The built-in 3-axis traverse allowed for precision sampling of the spray at multiple locations for development of general spray characteristics. The liquid mixture was delivered to the containment booth by a high-pressure pump using a valve system. Measurements were unimpeded by recirculation of mist, due to the unit’s ventilation system. 

  • Material Containment
         A customer was in the validation stages of product development of an aerosol spray can. To meet regulations, the particles emitted from the spray needed to be greater than a specified fine particle size. For this test, the Sympatec laser diffraction instrument was positioned within the containment booth. A ventilation hose was routed opposite the spray across from the Sympatec test section, and the flow of the HEPA filtration unit was adjusted to have a negligible impact on the spray plume. During a triggered spray acquisition, the spray was translated through the Sympatec test section using a custom-built traverse. The spray characteristics were rapidly and accurately collected for the required number of production samples and conditions.

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