Charity

Lighting systems can utilize a number of different lamp types. Incandescent, high intensity discharge and fluorescent lamps are most commonly used in residential, commercial and industrial facilities. Fluorescent lamps are nearly always used in cleanroom environments due to their energy efficiency, low maintenance and long life.

It's no mystery that cleanrooms present numerous challenges to designers who specify lighting systems. Cleanroom lighting will vary depending on the room's use, its classification and ceiling air supply configuration. In an ideal situation, lighting systems should provide good visibility and be designed with contamination control issues—electromagnetic field generation and cleanability—in mind. But before that can be achieved, a thorough examination of the basic fundamentals, illumination requirements, available styles and fixture construction must be undertaken.

A cleanroom provides a controlled, isolated environment for handling contamination-sensitive substances or for protecting the exterior environment from dangerous substances in the controlled area. The density of sub-micron and larger airborne particle contamination inside a cleanroom is kept within tightly controlled limits by forcing clean, filtered air into the cleanroom.

Hardwall cleanrooms provide a rigid wall structure and a completely enclosed cleanroom with air vents to exhaust air. These cleanrooms hold higher pressure differentials, which is important to provide differing cleanliness levels in different areas. Negative and positive/negative pressure cleanroom designs require hardwall cleanrooms, as do A/C and humidity control cleanrooms.

Achieving a specific cleanroom class requires not only clean physical design (non-particulating materials, etc.) but also a flow of clean, filtered air sufficient to both dilute existing particulates and to drive “dirty” air out of the controlled space.