CLIMATIC & STRESS TESTING: CLEANROOMS
A cleanroom instrument to count on
The new hand-held Particles Plus instrument provides easier validation of cleanroom specifications with spot checks or continuous monitoring
sampling protocol and analysis and record-keeping. All of this can be achieved with the handheld Particles Plus particle counter, according to Connect 2 Cleanrooms, which provides its installation and validation teamwith the instrument.
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SAMPLING PROTOCOL Before any particle counting takes place, the engineer needs to produce a sampling plan, something which the instrument can help with fromthemoment the cleanroom’s volume is recorded by the device. Once entered into the instrument, the unit will calculate howmany sampling locations are needed and the sample size to meet ISO14644 requirements along with the particle sizes to be considered. Up to 50 user-defined sampling recipes
can be set with different sample sizes, delays and location times, for example. For contract service providers like Connect 2 Cleanrooms, these can be used for saving different locations for clients for whom validations are performed regularly. Once the sampling protocol has been
established, the instrument also helps with route planning through the ability to re-
he process of validating ballroom cleanrooms on installation or during operation requires accurate, precise instrumentation, a valid
order sampling points. If a cleanroom requires nine validation locations, for example, the operator can sequence those locations within the instrument to provide the quickest route across the cleanroomfloor. This not only improves efficiency, but also reduces turbulence. According toMark
Jackson, installation & validationmanager at Connect 2 Cleanrooms, the Particles Plus units are easy to use, intuitive and robust. “Our technicians are confident in programming themto perform themost efficient validation route,” he says. The unit has an auto-advance feature
that automatically progresses to the next sample in the sequence with a programmed delay to enable the engineer tomove away fromthe sample position to prevent contamination of the count.
The Particles Plus instrument provides a flexible approach to particle counting, data collection and analysis
ANALYSIS AND RECORD KEEPING Data analysis is aided by graphs, which are generated as a visual indication of the history of particles per second plotted against time. Spikes can be annotated and comments, such as “door opened”, can be saved for full transparency. The particle counters can hold 45,000
data records simultaneously, which is enough for continuous particle counts of oneminute samples to be run for 33 days without having to download data. Data is time stamped to allow full traceability following extraction. Although such capacitymeans that data
doesn’t need to be constantly downloaded to prevent it frombeing over-written, the device nonethelessmakes it easy to connect across the industrial network or to the cloud via a number of data extraction options. Particles Plus units offerModbus
TCP/IP as standard as well as wireless transfer or via USB to PC or to USBmemory stick.
MONITORING Validation isn’t just a requirement of installation and commissioning cleanrooms, it is also as a method of demonstrating continuing compliance to the standards. Commenting on this requirement, Jackson says: “Ideally,
organisations should use a particle counter to perform
regular checks to ensure the cleanroomis performing to its ISO class parameters.” To enable this, as well as
spotmonitoring, the Particles Plus device can be used as a continuousmonitoring systemby connecting it to a network and giving it an IP address, which allows live data to be streamed to the PC desktop application or viewed remotely fromany internet browser. “This gives
organisations the reassurance that their
cleanrooms are still achieving
the standards they are built tomeet, in between validation visits,” concludes Jackson. EE
Read more on cleanroom technology on our website at
https://goo.gl/uFyzPK or scan the QR Code
December 2017 /// Environmental Engineering /// 31
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