Study of Air Pollution Due to Plasma Cutting Process and Designing Local Ventilation System with Collector in Central Workshop of Mobarakeh Steel Company

Cutting leads to production of different hazardous agents such as fumes, particles, gases and vapors. In various studies, the effects of fumes, gases, and vapors on workers and environment have been proved. Meanwhile, cutting alloying plates with plasma cutting machine due to containing various alloy materials produces a lot of air pollution. Therefore, using the ventilation system to remove the mentioned pollution has always been noteworthy. This study was performed on plasma cutting machine at Mobarakeh Steel Company. At first, according to ASTM the elements from alloy plates with optical emission spectrometry crm-35000-quantometery were detected, the air pollution from cutting the mentioned plates was sampled and measured using NIOSH 7300 method and according to the ACGIH:VS-72-20, VS-70-12, VS-70-11 VS-916 push-pull ventilation with bag filter collector was designed. Results of sampling from pollution of cutting the alloy material, concentration of iron, lead and cadmium fumes were more than the standard limits. After calculation for push system, air flow volume of 195.163 cfm, outgoing air velocity of 5937.4 fpm and for pull system air flow volume of 12498 cfm, minimum duct velocity of 3000 fpm and velocity pressure of duct of 0.717 inwg, for fan, total pressure of 6.301 inwg, static pressure of 0.587 inwg and power of 20.65 Bhp and for collector with pulse jet cleaning system air to cloth ratio of 7 and dimensions of 6.88ft × 6.56ft × 9.84ft were obtained. The result of study indicated that push pull ventilation compared to other ventilation system s for plasma cutting has more efficiency and makes suitable control for pollution.