Can you supply the fans across the whole food & beverage flowsheet, or only one duty?
Across the whole flowsheet. We have executed 40 food & beverage duties spanning spray, fluid-bed and flash-dryer process air, dilute-phase powder and flour conveying, hygienic room and dilution ventilation, dirty-side dust extraction, combustion and process air for dryers and roasters, roof and wall exhaust, and grease-laden kitchen and roasting exhaust. Each fan is engineered to its own air, temperature and hygiene demand — the hot clean dryer fan and the powder-conveying blower are different machines — but they come from one partner, on one engineering convention across the plant.
Our fan touches product. Can you build it to pass a food-safety / GMP audit?
Yes. Where the air touches product we build the wetted surfaces in 304 or 316L stainless, ground and polished smooth, with continuous crevice-free welds, radiused corners and drain points so there are no ledges or pockets for residue to collect. We add hinged access doors and split casings so the wheel and volute wash down and inspect without dismantling the fan. Tell us your cleaning regime and audit standard and we detail the hygienic scope on the GA drawing you sign off, not after.
We convey flour, milk powder and sugar. How do you handle the dust-explosion risk?
Most food powders — flour, milk and whey powder, sugar, starch, spray-dried fines — form a St 1 or St 2 explosible dust cloud, so we build to control ignition. Spark-resistant construction to AMCA 99 (Type A, B or C to your requirement): non-sparking wheel and inlet materials, generous running clearances so metal cannot rub, and full earthing and bonding against static. Where the area classification calls for it we self-declare an ATEX Zone 22 build per 2014/34/EU, Category 3. We size the spark-control scope to your Kst / dust class, not a default.
Spray-dried and sugar powders are sticky and cake on the wheel. What do you do?
Hygroscopic and spray-dried fines absorb moisture and cake, which unbalances the rotor and chokes the passages. We choose a backward-curved plate or radial wheel geometry so product does not key onto the blade, polish the passages smooth so they shed rather than hold, and provide wash-down access to clean the wheel in place. On hot dryer duty we add a heat shield and insulation to hold the wall above the powder's stick point so it does not bake on. The right answer depends on your product's moisture and stick behaviour, so we engineer it to your powder, not a default.
Can you build a replacement to match our existing food-plant fan's duty and footprint?
Yes. We reverse-engineer to the existing duty point (flow, static pressure, air temperature, density and dust or powder load), bearing centres, inlet/outlet orientation and foundation bolt pattern so the unit drops onto the existing base and ducting — whether it is a spray-dryer fan, a conveying blower, a ventilation fan or a dust collector. Made to your installation, not a nearest-catalogue substitute, and rebuilt to your current hygiene and spark-control standard. Send the old GA, the nameplate and a curve if you have one, and we match it.
Do you performance-test the fans, and what about AMCA, CE, ATEX and quality certification?
Every fan is performance-tested in-house to the AMCA 210 / ISO 5801 method on our 200 HP VFD test rig, and dynamically balanced to ISO 21940 G6.3 as standard (G2.5 / G1.0 on application). To be precise: that in-house testing is to the AMCA 210 / ISO 5801 method, not AMCA-certified, and we are not an AMCA member; CE is self-declared per 2006/42/EC and 2014/35/EU, and ATEX Zone 2/22 is self-declared per 2014/34/EU (Category 3) where the dust or area classification calls for it — those are self-declarations of conformity, not third-party certifications. Our only third-party certification is ISO 9001:2015.
