What are the components of a laminar air flow hood/chamber?

by Hospital Product Directory CEO

Laminar airflow is equipment that is usually used in microbiology laboratories. It comprises a chamber with an air blower devoted to its rear side that permits the flow of air with an unchanging speed in straight lines that are analogous to each other. The main resolve of a laminar flow cabinet/cowl supplied by laminar airflow dealers is to form a contaminant-free work setting. For this purpose, it sieves and captures all kinds of contamination particles entering the cabinet. It makes use of a sieve pad and a special sieve system recognized as a high-efficiency particulate air sieve or HEPA filter, which can eliminate airborne contamination particles that are up to 0.3 micrometers in size. A laminar airflow compartment is also recognized as a laminar flow cupboard or a tissue culture covering.

The laminar airflow cavity works on the code of the laminar flow of air. The flow of air is said to be laminar if the gas particles travel in numerous straight lines that are analogous to each other. The gas particles do not get assorted up with each other while traveling. It makes use of a high-efficiency particulate airflow scheme that inclines to capture and remove all sorts of airborne contaminated particles to uphold a clean and germ-free setting.

1. Cabinet

The cabinet of the laminar airflow cavity is naturally made up of stainless steel. It delivers wadding to the sterile setting shaped inside the laminar air flow hood and defends it from the pollution and adulterated particles present outside. The front side of the cabinet contains a glass shield that permits the user to access the cabinet by providing a limited or total opening.

2. Working Station

A flat working station is existing inside the chamber that offers a solid base to convey procedures such as plant tissue culture, electronic wafer creation, the culture of bacteria, etc. It benefits to hold the culture plates, burners, examples, and other gears in place. The solid usually used to build the laminar air flow chamber working station is stainless steel. This is because stainless steel is vigorous and does not endure corroding or erosion easily.

3. Filter Pad

The filter pad is used to obstruct or capture the contaminated particles and forbid them from being conveyed any further. The filter pad is also recognized as the prefilter or the primary filter as it originally sucks the air and does the first phase cleaning of the air. In a perpendicular laminar air flow cabinet, a filter pad is positioned on the top of the device, while in the case of a flat laminar air flow cabinet, it is rigged at the bottom of the chamber. The contaminated particles of size 5 microns or higher naturally get entombed by a filter pad.

4. Fan or Blower

The fan or the blower slurps the pre-filtered air through the filter pad and conveys it towards the high-efficiency particulate air filter. In a perpendicular laminar air flow cabinet, the blower is typically present right underneath the filter pad. On the differing, the location of the fan or blower in the case of a flat laminar airflow cabinet is right next to the filter pad.

5. HEPA Filter

HEPA filter or high-efficiency particulate air sieve is a special air sieve present inside the chamber that aids in the elimination of all kinds of pollution atoms counting bacteria, fungi, and dust atoms to uphold a safe and germ-free environment. For this purpose, the pre-filtered air is made to pass over the HEPA filter, which acts as the subordinate or concluding filter. The atoms that are even 0.3 microns in scope can be positively removed with the assistance of a HEPA filter. To eliminate the contaminated atoms, a HEPA filter usually makes use of three apparatuses as given below:

A. Intervention

Under this mechanism, the contaminated particles get wedged into the filter fibers. The intervention mechanism is used by the HEPA filter to sieve out large contaminated particles.

B. Impaction

It encompasses a sudden alteration in the airflow that reasons the particles to get entrenched in the filter fibers. The impaction mechanism is also used to eliminate moderately large adulterated particles from the inner setting of the chamber.

C. Diffusion

Here, the contaminated particles tend to interrelate with each other, move in a zig-zag path, and show Brownian gestures. This haphazard and recurrent motion of particles causes them to get trapped within the filter fibers. Moderately small pollutants can be removed with the help of the diffusion process.

6. UV Lamp

A laminar airflow chamber supplied by the laminar air flow dealers essentially comprises an ultraviolet light lamp, which is mostly used to kill the microorganisms and microbes that are imperceptible to the bare eye. The chamber must be methodically unprotected from ultraviolet radioactivity before and after use. The UV lamp cleanses the chamber as well as all the other fragments of equipment current inside it counting Petri dishes, test tubes, beakers, watch glasses, etc. The UV lamp must be turned on at least 15 minutes before the action.

7. Fluorescent Lamp

The main drive of a fluorescent lamp in a laminar airflow chamber is to yield proper lighting and illumination inside the hood.