The industrial sector has been a major contributor to decreased air quality and chemical concentrations for centuries. Today countries are clamping down on facility emissions. Image credit: Foto-Rabe | Pixabay
By Benjamin Brits
This subject may not easily connect the dots, but it does indeed have several links and a potential dramatic impact for humans, plants, animals, insects, and entire ecosystem health alike.
The significance of industrial processes, although going back centuries to their origin, became quite evident around the world from the mid-1700s onwards according to various sources. Notably, increasing occurrences of smog, acid rain, biodiversity loss, gas concentration and more recently general air quality deterioration have been observed.
These scenarios have, for the most part, all been associated directly with industrialisation and other resulting contributors such as the deployment of combustion engines and global travel. Several published studies have supported this as well as the external impacts that industrial facilities have on the local community of their respective placements.
Had simple awareness come about and action ensued in those earlier days, one has to consider that perhaps the global warming crisis and resulting poor air quality of today – that causes severe illness and many deaths each year too – could have been minimised, or eliminated entirely.
Large fans installed at a cooling tower of a power plant. Image credit: Peter H | Pixabay
As a global society, industrial processing fulfils the needs of pretty much every aspect of daily life – from much of the food we consume, to supplements we need to stay healthy and even the clothes we wear to mineral extractions and mining. As technology, and also awareness around health and safety have grown, so too has the methodology around processing – and to meet high technical demands, equipment and designs have continued to develop.
Industrial ventilation today not only fulfils the role in protecting workers through reduction or avoidance of exposure to hazards such as mist, smoke, gas, oils, or other particles produced by a production process, it is increasingly becoming essential to comply with air quality standards (inside and outside), protects products and equipment, and also plays a role (or should) in ensuring environmental health is preserved in terms of pollutants entering the atmosphere.
With the subject matter addressing a vast number of sectors from things such as pharmaceutical manufacturing to food handling, wood processing to paper production, mining to smelters, chemical engineering to solar farm installation, the creation of electronics and controllers, or even specialist workshops – each task undertaken would require some form of custom solution and applied design methodology to manage supply and exhaust air, required temperatures, humidity, odour, gas or vapour concentrations, particulate or contaminants, and so on.
Talking to some seniors, they would tell you that the ventilation solution seen in the “old days” would include fans mounted in a hole made in a back wall somewhere – if you were lucky the facility would have one fan blowing in and the other blowing out of the space. They would also tell you that when you stood next to or nearby those fans you could not hear yourself think. The function of ventilation in times of old was focused purely on attempting to circulate air of workspaces that would gain heat from the elements as well as the process within. Little attention was given to the workforce or the environment. How the industry has changed over time to now offer sophisticated and complex solutions to suit any setting.
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Design considerations
Industrial ventilation can vary significantly from very simple supply air, supply and extract air, to supply and extract with conditioning and filtration flowing in and out with the inclusion of particulate management or direct process extraction (such as what would be seen in printing press facilities where significant amounts of paper dust must be removed from the air to avoid spoilt products, machine faults and staff inhalation).
Several sources may need to be identified from within the facility above the standard air changes required per hour according to our building codes. Additionally, in industrial settings the engineering team would possibly be required to design a multi-function system serving different zones – being offices with occupants, general work areas, specialised processing areas and very often large voids – common in factories and warehouses of all types. Design may also require that airflow be directed to a particular destination at a facility to manage contamination.
Industrial ventilation systems today come in many different forms and configurations depending on facility operations. Image credit: Peter H | Pixabay
Sources of air-quality-affecting factors would further need to be identified on an individual basis before such contributors could be managed and controls applied. These could include the following as examples:
- Actual process equipment
- Employee tasks (such as welding, grinding, sanding, or painting)
- Mobile equipment such as trucks or forklifts
- By-products such as steam, chemicals, gasses, or dusts
The purpose of ventilation is essentially the function of a reduction in exposure to such aspects, introduction of fresh air, to dilute concentrations in enclosed spaces, venting stale air safely outside of the space – generally to the outside air, or, all of the above.
Ventilation components for industrial applications could therefore include any of the following:
- Hoods
- Ducts/ducting
- Various types of filtration
- Fans
- Stacks
- Cupboards
- Air scrubbers
- General ventilation inclusion
- Evaporative cooling
- Cooling towers
- Drying, curing, and calcining
- Aeration of liquids
- Vacuum and pressure systems
- Heat recovery
- Etc
The process would also involve the design considerations of how quickly air needs to be removed or replaced, venting air versus local regulations and laws, stacks, stack height and placement, type of appropriate ducting according to possible chemical reactions (acidic environments require stainless steel as an example), the impact and planning around maintenance requirements, the noise levels of the system/components, the inclusion of gates and dampers, and planning around possible duct and stack clogging.
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Generally speaking, industrial ventilation must cater to “hard/harsh” environments and is subject to long operating hours as well as varying operating conditions in local industries such as:
- Mining
- Power generation
- Processing and food production
- General manufacturing and engineering works
- Agriculture related (chemicals, nutrients and production of fertilisers)
- Marine operations
- Automotive
- Specialist facilities
The common sighting at many older facilities – the fan in the back wall of a factory. Image credit: Tim Hüfner | Unsplash
Facility responsibility: what the South African Acts and Laws mandate
For the industrial sectors, there are multi-pronged aspects that need to be addressed in ventilation today that may not be common knowledge, are ignored, or are disregarded. These aspects link the facility owners directly to not only the wellbeing of their plant and equipment, but mandate a firm responsibility towards employees and the environment.
As you may be aware, at time of publishing, the South African high court had recently confirmed that good quality air is a constitutional right and the government continues to review standards. Soon we can expect to see enforcement of laws and bylaws as we too partake in the global drive to reduce carbon emissions, global warming potential activities and pollution in the most basic form of processes that generate high concentrations of certain elements into the air that people, plants and animals rely on to exist, without it being detrimental to survival.
Considering then what the laws state in terms of labour and air quality, the following extracts have been taken to indicate the importance of employee health as well as environmental awareness that is further gaining a lot of traction locally and indeed across many other countries.
OHS Act
This Act, known as the Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (Act 85, 1993) consists of 50 sections approved by Parliament. The purpose of the Act is to provide for the health and safety of people at work or in connection with the use of plant and machinery. The Act further provides for the protection of people other than people at the place of work from hazards arising out of, or in connection with, the activities of these people at work – in other words the people and environment outside of any facility.
This Act provides a guide of the general duties that employers have towards workers as well as what the employer is required to do to ensure that the work environment is safe and without risk to the health of his or her workers.
To this end, the employer must:
- Provide and maintain the facility and all equipment that is necessary to complete the work in such a way that the environment and tasks required will not affect the health and safety of the worker.
- Before personal protective equipment may be used, the employer must first try to remove or reduce any danger to the health and safety of workers. Only when this is not practicable, should personal protective equipment be used. The employer must take measures to protect his or her workers’ health and safety against hazards that may result from the production, processing, use, handling, storage or transportation of any articles or substances, in other words, anything that workers may come into contact with at work.
- To ensure compliance, the employer must:
- Identify potential hazards which may be present while work is being done.
- Establish the precautionary measures that are necessary to protect his or her workers against the identified hazards and provide the means to implement precautionary measures.
- Provide necessary information, instructions, training and supervision while keeping the extent of workers’ competence in mind. In other words, what they may do and may not do.
- Not permit anyone to carry on with any task unless the necessary precautionary measures have been taken.
- Take steps to ensure that every person under his or her control complies with the requirements of the Act.
- Enforce the necessary control measures in the interest of health and safety.
- See to it that the work being done and the equipment used, is under the general supervision of a worker who has been trained to understand the hazards associated with the work.
- Such a worker must ensure that the precautionary measures are implemented and maintained.
Now many people may interpret this act as one only for the use of tools, heavy equipment and specialised machinery, and indeed it does fall into those categories, however when understanding the extent of the word “hazard” and read in conjunction with other acts and standards, air quality is definitely an element that must be taken under consideration when reading this portion. It is clearly evident that the responsibility of facility engineers and the owners are actually significant when one considers the implications and pending consequences of not effecting such requirements.
Here for example hazards may include fumes from chemicals or a process, dust particles, vapours, etc that can have an immediate effect on health or long-term effects such as seen in the past from lung diseases from asbestos or coal mining, and so on. The scope thus mandates employers to ensure air quality is of a level that does not affect any employee OR external party outside of the facility such as passers-by or local residents. Another well-known example is that of facilities that spray paint products without the necessary management – this results in overspray to co-located buildings and affects the general populous in the surrounding areas.
Common tasks in the industrial sector require ventilation control. These include welding, grinding, and sanding functions. Image credit: Rob Lambert | Unsplash
Air quality management (by-law, 2016)
In concurrent action required by industrial facilities is the mandate to ensure that the activity performed at any site does not adversely affect the environment – this appears little-known around the bylaws that govern the country.
Another common term heard far too often that is disguised as a joke is the one stating “Well, the wind will blow away all the contaminated air.” Science has proved that this is not an accurate statement at all because all that happens is that pollution and contaminants simply find themselves somewhere else in the environment and thus affect the air quality possibly hundreds of kilometres away from the origin. A good example that is also well known is the scenario whereby some parts of Johannesburg are occasionally flooded with foul smells that originate from the Witbank coal mining area more or less 150 kilometres away.
This extract was taken from the air quality management act by law of the Western Cape, that states, amongst other pertinent information, for context the extent of what encompasses environmental impact and air quality factors:
- ‘‘Environment’’ means the surroundings within which humans exist and that are made up of— (a) the land, water and atmosphere of the earth; (b) micro-organisms, plant and animal life; (c) any part or combination of (a) and (b) and the interrelationships among and between them; and (d) the physical, chemical, aesthetic and cultural properties and conditions of the foregoing that influence human health and well-being;
- ‘‘Fuel-burning equipment’’ means any installed furnace, boiler, burner, incinerator, smoking device, wood-fired oven, commercial wood or charcoal fired braai, barbecue or other equipment including a chimney – (a) designed to burn or capable of burning liquid, gas or solid fuel; (b) used to dispose of any material including general and hazardous waste by the application of heat at a rate of less than 10 kg of waste per day; or (c) used to subject liquid, gas or solid fuel to any process involving the application of heat; but excludes standby generators and temporary standby generators; domestic fuel-burning equipment; and gas-fired commercial cooking equipment;
- ‘‘Living organism’’ means any biological entity capable of transferring or replicating genetic material, including sterile organisms and viruses;
- ‘‘Nuisance’’ means an unreasonable interference or likely interference caused by air pollution which has an adverse impact on – (a) the health or well-being of any person or living organism; or (b) the use and enjoyment by an owner or occupier of his or her property or the environment;
- “Smoke’’ means the gases, particulate matter and products of combustion emitted into the atmosphere when material is burned or subjected to heat and includes the soot, grit and gritty particles emitted in smoke.
The extract goes on to include points around various manufacturing processes that include even the most common tasks performed that can affect the quality of air both within and outside of the facility.
As you can see, these documents are linked directly to several aspects related to industrial applications that need to be managed accordingly by law. As the country progresses in its industrial activity and overall growth, air quality will become a much higher-ranking factor and therefore industrial HVAC engineers and contractors should take note of the laws and bylaws in order to minimise a facility’s impact internally and externally, while also fulfilling the role in preserving the plant and equipment. This will also avoid liability of fines that will be seen in future falling onto role players who do not comply, possibly jointly. The severity of consequences will no doubt increase over time too as the world navigates “punishments” for pollution and the reduction of illnesses derived from poor air quality.
Article Sources:
- Air Quality Management Bylaws
- City of Cape Town
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment
- Department of Labour
- The Royal Society of Publishing: A chronology of global air quality
- General industry engagements
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