Brewery Dust Collection Systems

Low-maintenance, Long-Lasting, set-and-forget

The rapid rise in local regulations concerning dust collection in breweries has made it increasingly necessary for brewers to implement effective dust collection systems. ABM ensures your system meets your production and city standards with system design, integration, and service.

Why The Push For Dust Collection?

When something mildly combustible—like grain—is milled, the surface area of the material is increased exponentially, making it explosive at a certain point. The risk is greater for distillers than brewers because they use hammer mills rather than roller mills, but there have been incidents in breweries as well. Naturally this has caused some legislators to overreact both in cities and nationally, as reflected in the updated National Fire Prevention Act (NFPA 68). But it’s not all bad, because dust collection provides a number of benefits to health, operational efficiency, and pest prevention.

Options Available

Though we offer every type of system, baghouses are the preferred method for breweries because of their lower cost and maintenance requirements. The kinds we install for breweries are self-cleaning and can go for years without a bag change so you can truly set it and forget it. Among the dust collectors appropriate for breweries, the options are:

• Bucket-style discharge
• Pulse jet timer for bag cleaning
• Differential pressure magnehelic gauge kit
• Painted carbon steel or stainless steel
• Hinged door with T-handle (toolless) entry
• High or low-entry inlet
• Explosion mitigation panels

Implementation Methods

There are two primary methods for dust collection in breweries:

Whole-Room Negative Pressure

Suitable for breweries with contained mill rooms. This method involves installing vents in the ceiling to draw air off the entire room, maintaining a controlled and safe atmosphere. This method is slightly cheaper and more effective, but the difference isn’t so great that it should have a great impact on choice of space.

Dust Ports on Equipment

For breweries preferring not to alter the room’s air, or whose grain equipment is scattered through the space, our equipment is designed with dust ports that connect to an external dust collector. We can then run ducting to each port, pulling vacuum on each piece of equipment.

Hybrid

If you have a room big enough for most of your grain equipment but not all, it’s easy to draw most of the air from the mill room and run small ducting to the equipment outside of it.

Benefits

Implementing a dust collection system in your brewery can offer numerous advantages:

Explosion Prevention: Significantly reduces the risk of grain dust explosions.
Health and Safety: Protects employees from respiratory issues and allergic reactions to grain dust.
Pest Prevention: Lowers the chances of pest infestations by removing dust that can serve as a food source.
Operational Efficiency: Dramatically reduces the need for cleanup.
Compliance: Ensures your brewery meets local and national safety standards, avoiding potential fines and shutdowns.