Oil mist inhalation is hazardous to employees' health. Oil mist droplets cause floors to become slippery with residue create safety, cleanliness and maintenance concerns. Modern metalworking machinery is often controlled by sensitive electronics and production is lowered by unplanned disruptions caused by contaminated circuit boards. Handling equipment and products coated in a thin film of oil is not an acceptable working working environment and impacts productivity. Removing oil mist and neat oil emulsions in an efficient way is essential for workplace safety, cleanliness and productivity. 

Oil mist affects the health of machine operators, disrupts production and leaves an oil residue throughout the workplace that results in slippery floors and work surfaces. Almost all machining operations create oil mist to some extent. Oil mist is the aerosol that is formed when oil is used for cooling or lubricating during high-speed CNC machining processes of metal and some plastic components. Oil smoke is formed when oil contacts the hot machined surface, vaporizes, and condenses as sub-micron particles.  

It is well known that prolonged and repeated exposure to oil products can be harmful to health, which means that good ventilation must be ensured under all working conditions. Oil emulsions normally contain 90-95% water and the remaining is soluble oil. The oil mist consists of aerosols from oil or oil/water emulsion. Mineral oil-based metalworking fluids are known as neat cutting oils or straight oils. Emulsions normally contain a number of undisclosed additives. 

High-efficiency oil mist collection

Nederman solutions for oil mist collection are designed for continuous operations in demanding airflow applications. Our unique FibreDrain™ technology ensures superior separation performance and long filter media life, thus minimizing your overall costs and ensuring total peace of mind. A wide range of filters is available, covering the entire spectrum from wet to medium wet and semi dry (MQL) and dry applications. 

Nederman FibreDrain oil mist collectors feature a unique, specially treated fibre surface that allows the collected droplets to coalesce, grow in fiber intersections and finally drain by gravity out of the filter medium. This technology, called FibreDrain™ ensures superior efficiency even under the most challenging conditions in continuous operations.

The filters don’t absorb or get clogged by the oil. Instead, thanks to FibreDrain™, the air is thoroughly cleaned and a maximum amount of coolant can be retrieved and reused.

How it works:

FibreDrain oil mist solutions collect oil mist and oil smoke at the source - directly at the CNC machine either enclosed or open. The oil-laden air is passed through the layers of compressed filter media at low velocity.  The airstream enters at the bottom of the filter unit and passes upward through the filter cartridges. The filter stack is progressive in filtration properties, which means that the smaller the particle, the further it will penetrate the filters in the flow direction. The captured mist drains from the filters surface by gravity down in the sump of the collector. 

FibreDrain features:

• Unique filter technology ensures top performance in continuous operation
• Exceptional fluid drainage capacity ensures maximum coolant retrieval and reduces coolant consumption
• FibreDrain design secures long filter life and low operating cost
• Wide range of filter configurations to suit most application needs
• Bespoke modular systems for large centralized integrations
• Future-proof design can be adjusted for future configurations

Oil mist and oil smoke filters for emulsion or neat oil applications:

FibreDrain oil mist collectors are designed to handle large amounts of emulsion mist or oil smoke during continuous operation. They are developed with focus on maximum efficiency in combination with low maintenance cost. The separated oil/emulsion is collected at the bottom of the unit, where it can be drained out to a container, a pump box or directly back to the machine tool. 

The collectors are equipped with highly efficient and silent fans enclosed in an insulated housing or on top of the unit with a silencer on the outlet. All units can also be delivered with constant airflow control. 

MQL applications: 

FibreDrain MQL filters are designed to overcome the new circumstances caused by the transformation of wet processes into the Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) technologies. Being neither dry nor wet, MQL emissions define two new challenging application areas: 

1. Semi-Dry: wet content with very sticky, semi-fluid and solid non self-drainable particles
2. Medium wet: drainable fluid droplets in combination with non self-drainable particles

FibreDrain MQ solutions can be individually adjusted to changes in your metal-machining processes.

Improve your production efficiency, achieve a healthier work environment and reduce environmental impact with Nederman FibreDrain. 

Learn more about the FibreDrain product line here.