Safety & Health in the Stone Crushing Industry - Occupational ...

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Picture 11: dust capture with dry ventilation and suction system
Design and installation of a suitable engineering dust control system was one of the planned
interventions in the project. During interactions with unit owners, four criteria were laid out for the team
to develop a suitable dust abatement system:
o the system should not interfere with the current operating processes
o it should be energy efficient and operate within available surplus power
o it should not consume water as the region suffers from water scarcity
o investment cost should not exceed INR 400.000 or about USD 8.000
Before initiating the designing of the system, the team members studied different systems in other
regions like Punjab, Rajasthan and Kerala in India. Thereafter, the system was designed, discussed
with unit owners and their suggestions and inputs were integrated into the final product. The team
installed two systems in participating stone crushing units:
1. A completely dry system using only ventilation and suction to capture and collect the dust
particles and
2. A wet & dry combo technology that uses dry suction and wet capture of the dust
Both systems are decentralized ventilation systems with cyclones as the main component. It is
designed to suck dust from the sieves, crushers and chutes. The systems include the processes of
a. Dust COLLECTION at locations where dust is generated (crushers and sieves). This
includes an effective encapsulation of the dust generating machinery parts and
b. Dust SEPARATION using cyclones, bag filters or water tanks to separate the dust and
reduce dust emission into the environment air