The technical understanding the effects and liabilities associated with welding fumes continues to expand. Plymovent — which manufactures air-extraction and filtration products for welding fumes, oil mist, and vehicle exhaust fumes, and systems to improve indoor air quality — developed a product that allows manufacturers and welding operators to visualize the background concentration of welding fumes in their production facilities. It’s a design/simulation program that will confirm (or alert) the effectiveness of a general ventilation and filtration system for controlling welding fumes.

The FumeSimulator draws data from production processes and air-extraction equipment to evaluate the effectiveness of the latter.

According to the developer, “the FumeSimulator calculates and visualizes the concentration of welding fumes of a customized system solution. The simulation shows whether the welding fumes, in the concerning system solution, stay within the desired (legal) limits.”

The reliability of the simulation is related to the input of the customer, it emphasized. For an accurate simulation, customers indicate the types of welding activities taking place, how many welders and/or welding machines are in use, how many hours per day welding is performed, etc. Plymovent’s project engineers verify the collected data, and this information together with the data collected from the air-extraction system forms the input for the FumeSimulator.

For the simulation, the FumeSimulator uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology and generates a report that illustrates the concentration of welding fumes in the plant. The operator is able recognizes the production facility and the air-extraction system, and receives a specified input in the report.

”In an industry where complying with regulations is mandatory,” according to the developer, “a tool such as the FumeSimulator is beneficial to use when addressing the issue of welding fume in a production facility.”