Let’s review the basic components of a dust collection system. First, you’ll notice I said dust collection system not just dust collector. That’s because the dust collector is just one part of the overall system that we need to consider. 

The first part is actually the ductwork system itself. The ductwork for a dust collection system can have multiple pickups or drop points. Sometimes it can just be one. These usually take the form of either some kind of hood over a dust source, or a connection from a piece of process equipment, fitting directly into the machine or apparatus. Regardless of how it connects, we then have our duct branches which come together and form the ductwork trunk line or the main branch of the ductwork, which then goes back into the dust collector. 

This bottom cone section of a dust collector is what we call the dust collector hopper. Above that, we have what is called the dirty air plenum, or the dirty side of the baghouse. In this particular style, we have the tube sheet that is about a few feet below the top roof and this metal plate has holes in it that then hold the filter bags. Now as the dirty air comes in, it is routed into and through the filters, leaving the dust in the dirty side. Only clean air comes up and out into this section up here above the tube sheet. For that reason, we call this section of the dust collector the clean side of the baghouse or the clean air plenum.

On the other side, we have our connecting ductwork to the baghouse outlet which routes air down to our system fan. From our system fan, we then have some kind of exhaust stack that either lets the air exhaust out or in some instances we return the air back to the building. Sometimes when we return air back to the building, we may also have a HEPA after filter that’s placed after the fan. This is to capture any leaks that might have gotten by the baghouse filters when they’re running.

If we go back to the baghouse, you’ll notice in our hopper section, at the bottom we have the dust collector discharge. This is the bottom of the hopper where the dust is removed from the system. There needs to be some kind of air lock here to prevent open air from getting pulled in from outside. We can have a couple different options here. The simplest is a mechanical or manual slide gate. What’s more common is some sort of airlock. This would be most commonly a rotary airlock, but it could also be tip valves or some other kind of air lock that allows dust to be removed while maintaining an airtight seal.

Below the discharge device, whatever it may be, you’ll usually have a couple of different options. The simplest is simply to discharge the dust into some kind of bin or bag like a super sack. It could just dump into here and when this is filled, somebody removes it and places a new one underneath. Another situation that we might have is the dust is dropped down into some sort of pneumatic conveyor that will then blow the material away, perhaps to another bin or storage silo and be used somewhere else in the facility. The same thing goes for a mechanical screw conveyor or auger. Dust drops into it and then a screw carries the dust away either to be disposed of or reused somewhere else.

There are also smaller parts of the dust collector to consider, which vary on different kinds of dust collectors. For example, onn a pulse jet baghouse we have other parts like the pulse valves, air header, blow pipes, etc. Different cleaning systems will have different components but some of the smaller things you’ll see on all baghouses will include some sort of differential pressure gauge or monitoring device and you’ll see these two air tubes, one just above the tube sheet and one just below it. These will be connected with airlines down to a gauge, usually a magnahelic gauge, or sometimes it’s directly on a control board that can read differential pressure. This is the most important reading for your Baghouse operation, so it’s always going to be present on any kind of dust collector you have. You may also have different kinds of sensors for temperature. You may have a sensor that tells you if the hopper is filling with dust, or you may have other things like heaters, vibrators on the hoppers to keep them clean, and other accessories like these.

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