While environmental regulations have ensured that the particulate matter load due to the use of motor vehicles has fallen continuously, this anthropogenic source is, since the Covid-19 and energy crises. It is now being overtaken by the release of particulate matter from private wood-fired installations. This includes heating systems and wood-burning stoves.). Particulate matter is not only potentially harmful to health but also impairs the quality and functioning of sensitive products in many fields in the optics, electronics, electromechanical, medical engineering, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals sectors.
Among the various technical approaches to cleaning indoor air, filter techniques have proven to be particularly valuable because they represent an economical alternative offering low operating costs. They can also be retrofitted to existing equipment. The only way to prevent suspended particles and particulate matter is to clean the indoor air correctly.
As an example of a successfully implemented clean-room solution, we would like to present the company “Alternative Produktion”, or AL-PRO Gerd Böhm GmbH for short. This company can look back on a history of more than 20 years that have been characterized by sustainable growth, continuous further development, and the desire to find the ideal solution for each of its customers. As an industrial service provider, it now employs a more than 50-strong team in two plants in Göttingen, twelve of whom have been trained and instructed in clean-room operations. As a service provider, AL-PRO offers electromechanical assembly services (main area of activity) as well as cable assembly and product picking and finishing activities. For the last five years, it has also undertaken manufacturing, assembly, cleaning, and packaging under clean-room conditions. Its customers come from the optics, microelectronics, and electromechanical fields, as well as from the chip assembly sector, for which electrostatically protected areas are available.
In three independent clean-room systems occupying an area of 200 m², AL-PRO manufactures products subject to particularly stringent requirements in terms of the permissible manufacturing environment. The clean rooms are TÜV-certified to class 7 or 8 in accordance with ISO 14644-1 and are customer-certified to GMP class D.
Thanks to the presence of a laminar flow box, the air quality can be increased to cleanroom class 5 as per ISO 14644-1 when required. The hygiene concept was developed in the light of the practical implementation of the GMP guidelines and includes not only particle monitoring but also external monitoring of the microbiological load as well as external pest monitoring. In this way, environmental loads such as airborne microbes and dust or aerosol particles can be kept to an absolute minimum, thus meeting an essential prerequisite for applications in the biotechnology, medical technology, and pharmaceutical sectors.
The clean rooms were planned by Spetec GmbH and retrofitted in the existing factory halls, an operation that required only minimal structural changes to the building. All the clean rooms run around the clock and had operated at full capacity in dual-shift operation without any noteworthy downtimes until the end of last year. The clean-room environments are very flexibly configured to meet changing requirements, and this is the reason the staff airlock and materials airlock are kept spatially separate. AL-PRO is the right contact partner and offers customer-specific solutions wherever particles, particulate matter, or germs might alter product characteristics or impair product quality.
