Particulate contaminants are known to adversely affect quality, product yield, operational effectiveness and profitability. Particles can be viable or non-viable, made from different materials, come from different places and travel large distances. There are two main types of contamination:

1. External - gross atmospheric contamination, which infiltrates your facility.
2. Internal - the human body can generate 5-10 million skin, hair, dirt, and clothing particles every minute.

Particles outside the critical area present a potential problem

Especially the small, light, invisible particles. Even fairly loose particles that have settled on the floor are easily crushed into very small particles and redistributed back into the air. These airborne particles then get carried into the critical area where they present a potential hazard.

Fine Particles

Some of the important general properties of fine particles can be summarised as follows:

• They move with the air in which they are suspended.
• Due to gravity they settle out of the air slowly and can remain airborne for long periods of time.
• As they settle, they risk contacting and contaminating critical products and processes.

The small, light, particles (<5um) normally invisible to the naked eye are commonly called Airborne Molecular Contaminants (AMCs) or Ultra Fine Particles (UFP’s). They can become suspended for hours in the surrounding environment where they quickly spread polluting the atmosphere.

Many of us have personal experience of allergies. They are commonly caused by unseen airborne allergens such as pollen, mould spores and dust mites, which float in the air and are inhaled.

• A 1-micron particle may take as long as 15 hours to settle without movement.
• Pollen has been found 400 miles out to sea and 2 miles up in the air.

The Dycem Solution

For minimal investment, Dycem will dramatically reduce contamination and particle counts, helping you to improve your product quality, yield and profitability.

Why is Dycem so effective?

■ Independent studies show that 80% of contamination enters the critical area through entrance ways at or near floor level.
■ Using a correctly sized and maintained piece of Dycem at all entranceways will reduce the 80% by 99.8%
■ This leaves the 20% of the contaminants that have got into the critical area still to be addressed. Using a correctly sized and maintained piece of Dycem inside the critical area reduces air borne contamination at critical operational height by 60%
■ All this results in an overall reduction in the risk of contaminated products and processes by 92%.

Click here to download Particulates Matter Brochure