Semi OT The biggest DC you've owned/worked on?

[Michael McDuffie]

After reading about the new DC gloats, I got to wondering about BIG DCs. Whats the biggest DC you've worked on and/or owned.
It does not have to be a woodworking unit (hint) just collect dust and debris.

Be forwarned I'm going to try to trump anything you guys come up with.:D

Michael

[Bill Neely]

I worked in a GP hardboard plant and we had extensive dust collection/transfer equipment - carter days, big baghouses, etc. Individually, 200 hp blowers with 6ft wheels were probably the biggest. Not really that big.

[Andy London]

There is a spot about 5 min from my home where they make log homes, they have a 50 horse running their cyclone. Not sure of the fan size but the top of the cyclone is at least 16 feet across.

The biggest cyclone I have seen is in a food processing plant, it was used to pull potatoes but I have no idea just how powerful the motor would have been.

[Michael McDuffie]

200HP is pretty good sized and a 16 foot across cyclone is quite large but I'm thinking much bigger.

The one I'm thinking of has two motors and blower wheels.

Michael

[Lee DeRaud]

After reading about the new DC gloats, I got to wondering about BIG DCs. Whats the biggest DC you've worked on and/or owned.
It does not have to be a woodworking unit (hint) just collect dust and debris.

Be forwarned I'm going to try to trump anything you guys come up with.:D

Michael

Pratt&Whitney J79?

[Steve Evans]

You beat me to it. I was going to say a Pratt 4060 or a GE CF6. Not the greatest filters, but man have they got good CFM

Steve

[Michael McDuffie]

I'm not sure of the CFM but the intake was around 15 feet across.
2 1440HP 4160 volt motors spinning blower wheels that were about 8 feet or so round by 8 or 10 feet long.
2300 filter bags.
Four flights of stairs to get to top.
It drew so much current that we had to wait 15 minutes to start the second blower or incur a $4500.00 surcharge for the month. The voltage drop would kill half the HPS lights in the machine shop.

[Doug Edwards]

Well... the system I am currently working on designing has a 250 horsepower fan and over 30,000 ft^2 of filter bags in four 20'x50'x30' high modules :p . It will filter 135,000 cfm of air. But it's not even close to the biggest:eek: .

The biggest baghouse I have specified was to filter 480,000 cfm for a government facility (can't say more:rolleyes: ). The fans totaled about 600 Hp on that job. The compressed air requirement (for pulse jet caleaning) was close to 500 cfm at peak.

The biggest baghouse fans I've worked on were twin 600 Hp. units. They didn't move a huge amount of air (only about 65,000 cfm each), but operated at about twice the normal static pressure of most systems.

None of the above systems used cyclones. Cyclones are not efficient enough to meet USEPA requirements. The baghouses in this size range are typically 99.5% or more efficient. A cyclone (without an afterfilter) is only about 70-80% efficient for small particulate.

The photo below is for an average sized system of 65,000 cfm (don't have photos of the larger ones). It has two 250 Hp fans so the system never has to go down for maintenance.

[Doug Edwards]

The largest dust collector I have owned is the Harbor Freight DC (about 650 cfm). It has the Grizzley high efficiency bag upgrade.