Air Innovations, Inc. announces the completion of several projects requiring the company’s expertise designing and building custom environmental control units (ECUs). Two ECUs were shipped to two different pharmaceutical packaging firms that had demanding air conditioning specifications, said Air Innovations President and CEO Michael Wetzel, P.E. One was a returning customer that needed precisely controlled conditions to provide an exact level of uniform drying, for fluid bed dryers used by the manufacturer to coat capsules, pills and caplets. The ECU supplying air to the process tools was required to have the ability to either add or remove humidity to maintain a 50 degrees F dew point level, Wetzel explained.
The second pharmaceutical company required a single packaged system containing both humidification and a cooling system, plus a desiccant dryer, for blister pack packaging machine. The company requested broad flexibility in environmental control in anticipation of future requirements in the industry. The multiple device system Air Innovations designed can provide either a very dry or a very humid environment on demand.
University research labs continue to specify Air Innovations’s ECUs, Wetzel noted. To expand its research infrastructure in the field of nanophotonics, one institution specified a three-cubed, water-cooled system (each cube 26″ x 30″) with a dry-steam humidification, for an electron beam lithography tool. The tool will be used to support the research program led by one of the university’s top scientists. The other university ordered an ECU for a 425 sq.ft. cleanroom laboratory that will be adjacent to the school’s existing scanning electronic microscope and photolithography rooms. The project includes the construction of a cleanroom enclosure with two rooms; one a Class 100 and the other a Class 1000 clean room.
A cleanroom being upgraded for a specialty contract lens manufacturer will receive two, 15-ton vertical environmental control units to replace the original Air Innovations system that has been successfully operating 24/7 since 1988. The manufacturer also owns two other older model Air Innovations ECUs and will eventually replace them with the updated versions, Wetzel said.
See the case study on these custom environmental control system.