What Is A Clean room
Clean rooms are in specialized facilities and are used to keep dust, particles, and airborne organisms out of areas where scientific research is being done or sensitive products are being produced. Clean rooms can be found in pharmaceutical production facilities, medical research facilities, and any type of facility that has sensitive items to any dust or airborne particles. A few of the things manufactured in a clean room are OLED, microLED displays, LCD, and integrated circuits. The level of a clean room is determined by the number of particles found inside the clean room per cubic meter.
Clean rooms vary in size; some are small, some are large, and some may even be an entire manufacturing facility. There are also specialty clean rooms utilized in some facilities, such as a modular clean room. Rechargeable batteries, solar panels, biotechnology, and semiconductor manufacturing are all produced in a clean room.
The Clean room Standards
When air enters into a clean room it is filtered and cooled simultaneously by an air handler that uses fine filters to eliminate all the dust particles. Once the air is filtered, it enters the room and is consistently recirculated by fan units containing-efficiency particulate absorbing filters or ultra-low particulate air filters. These filters will remove any contaminants that have been generated inside of the clean room. When staff members enter a clean room or leaves, it is through a special entrance called an airlock. Staff members must wear protective clothing at all times when in the clean room. The types of clothing worn are special coveralls, boots, gloves, face masks, and hoods.
What Are The Different Clean room Classifications
A clean room has different classification levels and is classified by the level of clean air inside the controlled environment. The governing body that ranks clean rooms in the United States and Canada is called the ISO classification system ISO 14644-1. There are currently nine different classifications of clean rooms and they are ISO 1 through ISO 9. ISO 9 is the dirtiest and ISO 1 is the cleanest.
Clean rooms are essential for today’s society, especially when it comes to producing sensitive materials that cannot be exposed to dust particles or any foreign airborne organisms. There are different levels of clean rooms because some items require a cleaner environment to be produced than others. It speaks volumes on the importance of clean rooms when staff members have to don themselves in personal protective equipment as if they were almost performing a sterile surgical procedure.