Company Finds Cartridge Dust Collectors to be the Gold Standard (continued)

Improving the Dust Collection System

Shortly after receiving approval for the facility upgrade project, Pioneer contacted Prairie Engineering Inc., Johnston, Iowa, an engineering firm specializing in engineering and design projects for the seed and agricultural industries. After talking with Pioneer, Don Francois, the engineering firm's vice president of engineering, worked with his team to put together some preliminary designs for the bidding process.

"Since we've worked for Pioneer in the past, they contacted us again to bid on this major plant upgrade," says Francois. "For this project, they wanted a new dust collection system for their production facility as well as some new conditioning equipment installed and some existing equipment rearranged - basically a complete facility renovation."

Like the other six dust collectors, the stand-alone treatment-area dust collector uses cartridge filters that remove 99.99 percent of dust particles down to 0.5 microns.

In January 2006, Prairie Engineering was awarded the contract and Francois began working on the final engineering drawings for the plant upgrade, completing them in March 2006. During this time, Pioneer's engineers provided Francois with the airflow requirements for each dust collector. After receiving this information, Francois called sales engineer Jerry Ruggle of W.D. Patterson Co., Perry, Iowa, a manufacturer's rep for Farr Air Pollution Control (APC), to specify the necessary equipment for the project. Camfil Farr APC, Jonesboro, Ark., supplies dust and fume collection equipment to a range of manufacturing industries.

Francois has been specifying the supplier's dust collection equipment since 1998. "When we started specifying the supplier's equipment," he says, "we were looking for something economical and effective, and we found that their equipment was priced right and worked great. For this project, I told Jerry the required airflow rates and other details, and he ordered the necessary dust collection equipment from the supplier. After completing the engineering drawings and ordering all of the equipment, we began renovating the production facility. As the general contractor, we supervised all aspects of the project, from removing the old equipment to installing the new, and we had the entire facility up and running four months later, in July."