Hi,

We have many AHU (Air handling Units) in our plant and during a sand storm all the dusts are being sucked by AHU which in turn clogs filters and blow dusts in side the plant. How can I detect there is a sand storm outside the plant and automatically shut down the AHU. Is there any sensor or device available in market?

Thanks,
Shree

 

Easy as pie. Set up an OTS opposed optical sensor pair with an airwash to fight dust. When the light is obscured by flying sand for X seconds, you have a sandstorm. Adjust distance as needed for sensitivity, you will want a timer to ignore people, animals or other short term events. The better sensors will ignore ambient light.

Regards
cww

 

cww,

OTS opposed optical sensor.

Can you explain 'OTS' please and suggest a possible manufacturer/vendor and part number?

 

Off The Shelf. I've used a lot from Banner as they are local and the printing industry was really big on optical sensors. I don't have a catalog here at home, but any sensor pair that will work at say 20 feet should suffice. Adjustable sensitivity would be nice but you can misalign them to tune them too. The idea is to have them set so they are just barely on. That way, sand diffusion should be enough to break the beam. You can test with smoke as it's hard to simulate a sandstorm. Ask the Banner folks, the ones I've talked to really knew their line and understood my strangest applications. But anybody's opposed optical sensors should work for this.

Regards
cww

 

Thanks!

This is good info, all of it.