Mill Room Dust Collection System?

[TGTimm]

We'd like to reduce our milling dust as much as possible. I'm thinking a wood-shop type dust collection system (explosion proof, of course), with hoods at the points of origin of the dust--where the auger dumps into the weigh hopper and at the input and output of the mill. Obviously, I just want to collect dust, not grain or grist, so some tweaking will be needed, and I'm not sure I even want hoods.

Have any of you built a system like this? If so, do you have any pictures of your hoods or whatever worked for you?

Oh, yeah--what size (hp) would be best? obviously, too much power wouldn't be good.

Thanks--

[LTD Brewing]

We picked up this bad boy from Harbor Freight (not the greatest place for quality products, but this has been solid for us).

http://www.harborfreight.com/2-hp-industrial-5-micron-dust-collector-97869.html

For the price, I don't believe there is a better option. 2HP Works great for dust collection in our setup. We didn't build a hood at the origin points, but rather found setting the collection tube close enough to the dust creation areas worked incredibly well (without collecting any grain/grist). It sits outside of our grain room and has a tube that extends into the room, sorry for the terrible pictures. As you can see from the pictures on the harbor freight website, it has two possible intakes (for two separate tubes), you could have one tube sit right by where the auger dumps into the weigh hopper and the other at the input and output of the mill (you might have to splice the second tube depending on how much of a gap you have).

We set the suction end of the tube close to the bottom of the mill, hardly any dust gets away from this workhorse with almost no collection of grist/grain. Hope this helps.

Blake
LTD Brewing

[TGTimm]

Here's our system: http://discussions.probrewer.com/sho...451#post131451

[fastricky]

I'm VERY interested in the Harbor Freight machine shown above. Our mill is on a mezzanine in our brewery (not in an enclosed room).

We do have a massive exhaust fan in the brewery that sucks our much of the dust but in the winter it's too cold to run so I'd like to create something to capture much of the dust.

I thought about installing a large hood above the mill hopper where we dump the drain into the mill and then connected to the Harbor Freight machine.

It sound as if the HF machine is properly grounded and designed for dust collection like we have in the brewery.

Can anyone enlighten me further on how to best create this (like, where do you find a dust hood large enough to adequately capture the dust from our mill?)

[beerguy1]

I will provide this, be sure to run bare copper wire along the entire length of the collection pipe. Static charges can build up anywhere not just in a grounded vacuum proper grounding To the buss bar or even a copper pipe driven into the ground is best

[TGTimm]

Take a look at the link in my post 2 above here.

A 1 hp Jet DC system works great in our mill room. We hard-piped the room to facilitate good airflow--keep the flex hose to a bare minimum as it greatly restricts air flow, and avoid 90 degree fittings wherever possible, for the same reason--2 45s have much less restriction than 1 90.

As beerguy mentions, ground the hell out of everything, else your DC system can turn into a huge bomb.

[Smlsound]

Awesome thread. We're getting a new mill soon. Our slow season is right now, hopefully when business picks up we can ditch our stupid homebrew mill on steroids. It was fun to start with, but doing regular 10BBL batches through a tiny three roller is a PITA. What would you say the cost, all in, was Timm? I guess it would depend on your system length, etc. but it seems like you could get this done for well under 1,000?

Our brewery is just a wide open space, but when we get the new mill we'll be adding a room for the sole purpose of dust collection and prevention.

[beerguy1]

Awesome thread. We're getting a new mill soon. Our slow season is right now, hopefully when business picks up we can ditch our stupid homebrew mill on steroids. It was fun to start with, but doing regular 10BBL batches through a tiny three roller is a PITA. What would you say the cost, all in, was Timm? I guess it would depend on your system length, etc. but it seems like you could get this done for well under 1,000?

Our brewery is just a wide open space, but when we get the new mill we'll be adding a room for the sole purpose of dust collection and prevention.

Just a heads up I am not sure of your situation but some codes will call for total spark free zone inside the grain in room and that means HUGE electrical costs for the equipment so be sure you do it safely to prevent an explosion and get a certified electrician is there to give you a estimate so you can plan on it for the total costs

[TGTimm]

Smlsound--Aside from labor costs, yes, it can be done for less than $1k. The main labor cost was building the outside lean-to to satisfy OSHA--if the DC explodes (very unlikely), the explosion would be outside of the millroom and directed (by the louvered panels) away from the building.

Beerguy--by eliminating nearly all of the air-borne dust, we no longer have a dust-explosion hazard area--but still, all sources of ignition should be kept out of a millroom. If you have open-center augers (flex augers, etc), an explosion could potentially propagate through the augers, into the silo, and then... well, Google "dust explosion" for some examples of what can happen. You'd be looking for a new neighborhood to locate your new brewery.

In several of the case studies I've read, the initial source of ignition was an ungrounded vacuum cleaner which caused a small explosion (small unless you were holding it), resulting in dust on horizontal surfaces becoming airborne and adding to the explosion, which then propagated through the auger to the silo... BOOM! Is like Russian joke--everyone dies.

Keep millrooms meticulously clean, and invest in an explosion-proof shop vac for cleaning it--not cheap by any means, but, hey....