Cleanrooms are specialized environments designed to control variables such as airborne particle density and temperature. They are essential for producing microchips and pharmaceuticals, and were first developed in the early 1960s. Cleanrooms use laminar flow air supply to remove airborne particles, and their cleanliness is directly proportional to air speed. The cost of constructing cleanrooms can be high, but their use will continue to increase as our economy becomes more dependent on contamination-sensitive products. The Silicon Valley area of California has the highest concentration of cleanrooms.
A cleanroom is a controlled environment with a specialized design for controlling variables such as 1) the density of airborne particles per cubic meter or 2) the temperature of the room. Clean rooms are essential for production processes that require high degrees of cleanliness or a precise temperature, such as in the computer industry. Cleanrooms are used most often when creating microchips and pharmaceuticals, but are used extensively in a variety of other important industries. The clean rooms are designed by mechanical engineers. The geographic location with the highest concentration of cleanrooms is the Silicon Valley area of California.
Cleanrooms were first used in the early 1960s. In 1961, Willis Whitfield of Sandia Laboratories, working with colleagues, came up with a new concept in ventilation – the idea of a “unidirectional” or “laminar flow” air supply – air that flows in a and is drawn in through an exhaust port on the opposite side of the room. Because the flow is laminar, like the center of a river, it allows for the removal of a significant percentage of airborne particles that would otherwise be caught in the eddies and eddies of a conventional ventilation plan. This progress has enabled the creation of rooms with very low levels of airborne contaminants compared to previous standards. In a laminar flow cleanroom, air is pumped into a room through a bank of HEPA (high efficiency particulate matter) filters. Since the airflow must be kept completely unidirectional, only one wall or ceiling acts as a continuous source of clean air, with the opposite wall or floor acting as an exhaust grille to remove excess air and keep the flow flowing. movement.
The cleanliness of any one-way flow cleanroom is directly proportional to the speed of the air moving through the room. Since the volumes of air supplied to unidirectional flow spaces are many times (10-100) greater than those supplied to conventionally ventilated spaces, the capital and operating costs of constructing such spaces can be very high. But many thousands of these rooms have been built since the 1960s, to varying degrees of cleanliness, and as more and more of our economy becomes dependent on manufacturing delicate and contamination-sensitive products, the use of cleanrooms will continue to increase .
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
