Question: What is the most challenging project you have been involved with?

Louise Wood answered on 18 Jun 2021: last edited 18 Jun 2021 11:17 am

Hi Isla, Happy Friday and thanks for the question. I’m working out in the rain today servicing a wet acid scrubber (boo hiss). Hope you’re having a great day?
Anyway back to your question. I would say a Dust Extraction project I’m working on right now. This is for a quarry in Wales. They have machines bigger than my van that cut the huge slate blocks into large floor tiles. They use a stream of water to wet the dust at the saw blade but lots of dust is still thrown out. The dust contains silica, it’s not good for the lungs. Breathe too much of that in and you can get silicosis, asthma and lung cancer.
I wanted to put a hood to capture the dust over the saw blade but they need access to this machine for maintenance. I spent a long time thinking about the best way to extract at source. It’s just not possible. Then I just decided to box the whole thing in, basically build a room around the machine. Extract the room. The room has ample access for maintenance but is interlocked so no one can enter whilst it’s running (when there’s a higher risk of breathing in the silica dust). It’s not ideal but will work. Every project has issues you need to think about.