Clean Rooms

The other fields of science started taking interest in these rooms from the early 1960s. During this period, there were a plenty of improvements done to increase the quality of clean rooms.

Let us have a look at how the clean rooms are constructed and what purposes do these rooms serve.

What are Clean Rooms?

As stated above, the clean rooms provide an environment that contains very small amount of dust, microbes, chemical vapours, particulate matter such as aerosols and other pollutants. The air that enters a clean room is filtered by the means of HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) or ULPA (Ultra Low Penetration Air) filters.

The individuals who work in the clean rooms wear specialised clothing consisting of gloves, masks, coveralls etc. Usually, the entry to the clean room is through airlocks and may include air showers. Airlocks are contraptions that do not allow the air on either side of the contraption to mix. While air showers are devices that shower a person with air in order to remove the dust particles present on his body.

The equipment present in clean rooms is designed specially with materials that do not produce a large amount of dust. Also, their design facilitates easy cleaning. The furniture and the cleaning equipment are also specially made to produce small amount of contaminants.

Many day-to-day articles such as pens, pencils, paper etc. cannot be used within the clean rooms. However, low dust-producing replacements of the same are available. The clean rooms may also have systems to control humidity. This is done in order to prevent discharge of static electricity.

Usually, the air pressure in a clean room is greater than the pressure outside the room. This is done in order to avoid the entry of outside air into the clean room in case of leaks.

Usually, the clean room is enclosed in another room that separates it from the outside environment and thus helps in controlling the air within the clean room. However, with the advancements in technology, mobile clean rooms are available as well. Such rooms find their application in industries that have units which move from place to place.

Classification of Clean Rooms

The classification of clean rooms is based on the number of dust particles that are present in a given volume of air and also the size of these particles. There are two systems of classification of clean rooms such as US FED 209E and ISO. Former is used for those with particles of greater size and latter for those with particles with lesser size.

In the first method of classification mentioned above, the value is determined from the number of particles of size greater than 0.5 micrometres present in a cubic foot of air. For example, a ‘class 100 clean room’ has at most 100 particles of size greater than 5 micrometres in a cubic foot of air.

As far as the second method of classification is concerned, the value represents the logarithm to the base 10 of the number of particles present in a cubic metre of air. The size of the particles is greater than 0.1 micrometres. For example, a ‘class 5 clean room’ has at most 10000 particles of size 0.1 micrometre or greater in a cubic metre of air.

Need for Clean Rooms

These days, clean rooms are extensively used in the semiconductor industry. Apart from this, they also find their application in medicine, food processing, industries manufacturing electronic gadgets and computer hardware and other industries that need a dust-free environment. Clean rooms are also important as far as data recovery industry is concerned. This industry usually makes use of class 100 clean rooms.

In case a data storage medium (especially ones that store data in the magnetic form) that has suffered physical damage, the device needs to be opened in order to repair it and recover data from the same. If this operation is carried out in the normal environment, then the dust particles in air are likely to damage the medium and may even lead to permanent loss of data. To avoid the same, a clean environment is necessary and hence a clean room is made use of.

It can be seen that clean rooms are indispensable as far as data recovery industry is concerned. Thus, whenever you need to hire a data recovery firm, ensure that it has a clean room of good quality.