1Cold - Clean Room Design, Construction, and Refurbishment Services
A clean room is essential for specialized industrial processes and scientific research, particularly in the pharmaceutical and microprocessor manufacturing sectors. These rooms are designed to minimize pollutants such as aerosol particles, dust, and microbes, making them indispensable in medical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, technological, and food and drink industries. They are also crucial in biotechnology and medical devices, as well as selective manufacturing processes in aerospace, military, and optics sectors. The clean room concept originated in the 1960s with American physicist Willis Whitfield, who devised a system for highly-filtered, consistent airflow to eliminate impurities. Modern clean rooms maintain this principle with significant advancements. The cleanliness of a clean room is measured by the number of particles per cubic meter, with a typical clean room allowing only 12 particles per cubic meter compared to 35 million in an urban area. Key to their function are High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which trap particles of 0.3 microns and larger, and sometimes Ultra Low Particulate Air (ULPA) filters for stricter requirements. Personnel follow strict contamination control protocols, such as using airlocks, gowning rooms, air showers, and special clothing to prevent contamination of the environment. Proper design includes a comprehensive air distribution system with downstream air returns, tailored to specific requirements. 1COLD Ltd offers custom clean room design and construction services across various sizes and applications.
A clean room is a vital addition to any facilities that carry out specialised industrial processes or scientific research, such as the manufacture of pharmaceutical items and microprocessors. Utilised by industries that require an environment with minimum pollutants (including aerosol particles, dust and microbes), every clean room varies in size and complexity.
Creating the appropriate cleanroom that is best suited to the products and processes in-hand is crucial, especially in the medical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, technological and food and drink industries.
Used extensively in the biotech and medical device industries, clean rooms are also instrumental in selected process manufacturing in the aerospace, military and optics sectors.
The clean room was invented in the 1960s by Willis Whitfield – an American physicist. An employee of the Sandia National Laboratories, he drew up his initial plans in 1960 to eradicate the problems of particles and unpredictable airflows in sterile environments.
His design created a clean room with a highly-filtered, consistent air flow to eradicate impurities. His modern and efficient clean room was a huge success and within a few years, more than $50 billion sales had been generated worldwide.
The principle is still used today, with further developments taking place over the years to produce the modern 21st century clean room.
Clean rooms are used in almost every industry in which small particles will have a negative impact on the manufacturing processes. A clean room’s cleanliness is quantified by how many particles per cubic metre are in the air.
In a typical urban area, the ambient outdoor air contains 35 million particles in each cubic metre. In comparison, a typical clean room permits just 12 particles per cubic metre.
The clean room uses a High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter, which traps particles of 0.3 micron and larger. The air that is delivered to the clean room must pass through the HEPA filter. In some instances, the clean room will use Ultra Low Particulate Air (ULPA) filters for an even more stringent performance.