If you were to take special instrumentation and collect a sample of the air that you’re breathing at this moment, you’d be likely to find, once you brought the air to a laboratory, that it contains a certain level of contamination. The list of the contaminants you would probably find is likely to include particles of organic origin such as dead skin and dander as well as contaminants from non-animal sources; pollen is an example of such a contaminant. Depending on the context, the presence of these and other contaminants in sufficient quantities can be disruptive. This can be Continue reading
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Clean Rooms: Many Types, Many Uses

Clean room image courtesy of Abtech, Inc.
Clean rooms seem like some of the most advanced industrial utilities out there. After all, the most advanced clean room varieties are capable of filtering air to the extent that within a given cubic meter of atmosphere, there can be found no more than 10 particles of 0.1 micrometers in size (just for reference, a micrometer is Continue reading
The Evolution of Clean Room Systems

Clean room image courtesy of American Cleanroom Systems.
Who can say when the history of industry officially began? Even within industry, there probably are disagreements about what disciplines qualify as industrial. These questions may be unanswerable, but for students of the history of industry’s development, it’s possible to look at certain developments and learn. The history of Continue reading
Softwall Clean Rooms: Often More than Enough
Softwall clean room image courtesy of Clean Rooms International.
If the purpose of a clean room is to provide an environment in which air contamination and flow can be controlled, then what is the utility of a softwall clean room? Isn’t it self-defeating to make a clean room with walls that can be brushed aside by hand? Nope. Different clean rooms are used for different purposes, and softwall clean rooms are perfectly suited to many of those purposes. Consider, for example, a manufacturing facility in which Continue reading
Understanding Clean Room Design

Clean room image courtesy of Modular Cleanrooms Inc.
Imagine that you’re standing outdoors in a city or town of average size. If you could suddenly trap one cubic meter of air and study its contents, you would be likely to discover around 35 million particles, all or most of which would be at least 0.5 micrometers in size or larger. Resist asking why you might do this; just know that your discovery of 35 million particles of sizes that are equal or greater to 0.5 micrometers Continue reading
The Advantages of Modular Clean Rooms

Clean room image courtesy of United Partition Systems.
There are a lot of advantages to investing in a modular clean room over permanent alternatives. Modular clean rooms are an excellent, economical choice for companies whose operations are shifting to include a need for a small to medium-sized controlled working environment. This is especially true for Continue reading
What’s in the Name “Portable Clean Rooms?”

Portable clean room image courtesy of IAC Industries.
Different industry professionals mean different things when they talk about portable clean rooms. Among the great diversity of different portable clean room designs available to customers, the only property that every example shares is portability. Beyond that commonality, a given set of two portable clean rooms could have nothing else in common. This is a bit of an unusual example, but take the example of a modular clean room employed by an agency like the US Centers for Disease control during an emergency. If an outbreak of an infectious disease was Continue reading
Class 100 Clean Rooms: ISO vs. FED-STD-209E

Clean room image courtesy of Simplex Isolation Systems.
Clean rooms are all about control. If you are a professional who manufactures highly specialized products, and if that manufacturing process is sensitive to the interference of things like air contaminants, certain wavelengths of light or even electromagnetic interference, you would need access to an area in which you could control or eliminate those unwanted variables. Luckily, industry has Continue reading
Class 10,000 Clean Rooms: The Good Old Days

Clean room image courtesy of Technical Air Products.
It almost seems like a shame that US FED STD 209E, the set of clean room standards developed by the US General Services Administration, was cancelled. People may disagree about this, but the system was simple and easy to remember, which tends to bode well in industry and commerce. Take the example of STD 209E Class 10,000. It’s as simple as it gets! According to STD 209E, a Class 10,000 clean room can be classified as such only if a cubic foot of filtered air sample taken from Continue reading
The Importance of Careful Clean Room Construction
Clean room construction is an involved process. This is true if the product is a portable clean room, a modular clean room or a permanent, highly-controlled clean room. Companies that make use of clean rooms must be able to rely on their workspaces to perform in the way that they are supposed to. For this Continue reading