Maintaining a sterile environment for your mushroom spawn is an ongoing challenge for cultivators.
While a glove box can be effective to some extent, serious mushroom growers should explore the advantages of a laminar flow bench.
Operating within a clean airflow is not only more convenient but also simpler compared to the cumbersome glove box method.
A well-built laminar flow bench offers the possibility of achieving laboratory-level cleanliness, even in less-than-ideal environments like a kitchen or basement, significantly improving the success rate for home cultivators.
Airflow calculation
It is said that air should flow over the bench at 0.45 m/s within a 20 cm distance of the HEPA Filter’s surface (With a 20 % tolerance so minimum flow of 0.36 m/s and a maximum of 0.54 m/s). [https://www.mikropor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/048_MIKROPOR-LAF-BROSUR-170820.pdf]
We obtain P/Q charts from our fans manufacturer and pressure drop from the filter manufactures. The area is taken from our cad software.
The HEPA filter pressure drop is around 20mmH20. At this drop the airflow can be obtained from the P/Q fan graph. This comes out around 100CFM=0.05m3/s.
Using the area of the filter the airspeed can be obtained by dividing the volumetric airflow by the filter area, 0.05/0.09=0.56m/s!
Perfect, this is at the upper end but by design. All our units come with a speed controlled built in, so if this is too high, simply turn it down.
Particle testing
During development or change of supplier, we always test our hoods in house and hold them to a strict particle testing standard. We look to achieve 0ug/m3 of PM1.0 matter. See one of hoods undergoing testing below.
Please bear in mind, this is an example from one of our hoods, each hood undergoes it own component selection, calculation and testing regime.
For making it this far we want to offer you a special discount, use code "SAVE5" at checkout.
