Powder coating booth with improved cyclone separator

Abstract

Apparatus and process for extracting powder from a stream of powder laden air drawn from a manual powder spray booth in a first embodiment, with a cyclone recovery system, typically containing two cyclone separators for separating the powder from the air. The cyclone separators have a breakaway design to facilitate cleaning. The resulting cyclone cleaned air is drawn through a prefilter section by a fan section having serially stacked fans. The prefilter section further separates powder from the cyclone cleaned air. The resulting prefilter cleaned air is next filtered in a final filter section and exhausted to the air surrounding the cyclone recovery system. The invention also relates to an improved cyclone separator which incorporates a perforated thimble between the downwardly and upwardly moving vortexes in the cyclone separator to reduce the pressure drop across the cyclone separator. In a second embodiment, a stream of powder laden air is drawn from an automatic powder spray booth with a cyclone recovery system typically incorporating horizontally disposed cyclone separators, each with a perforated thimble, a filter module with cartridge filters, a fan module, and a final filter.