Preventing Condensation in Industrial and Commercial Spaces
December 19, 2024
A high relative humidity can cause a lot of issues in your industrial or commercial space.
Condensation may seem like a minor inconvenience, but it can lead to much bigger problems, regardless of what you are producing or processing. Controlling condensation ensures that your business is as efficient as possible, and the products you ship out are of the highest quality.
What Causes Condensation?
In large areas with high ceilings, typical of warehouses, factories, and processing plants, the temperatures fluctuate a lot throughout the day and night. As warm air cools, your various surfaces, including machinery, floors, and ceilings, all reach their ‘dew point’ and start to form droplets of moisture.
If this is happening night after night, mould and damp will form quickly, often in areas you can’t see. This not only causes health risks to you and your team; it will damage equipment and ruin the products you create or store.
Understanding Condensation Prevention
Many companies have approached us over the years because of condensation build-up in their factory, warehouse, or commercial building(s). In most cases they’ve tried a few methods to prevent condensation, but none are working.
One of the most common methods is installing more air conditioning. On paper this looks like a solid idea, dryer air would have less moisture, right? In fact air conditioning is not an effective measure for reducing relative humidity. The air will feel cooler and dryer, but the moisture levels aren’t as low as a quality desiccant dehumidifier guarantees.
As condensation is more likely to build-up during the night and early morning, unless your air-conditioning is on 24/7, it won’t prevent it and will just leave you with an expensive energy bill. On average, your relative humidity (RH) will be at 30% during the day, when the air is warmer, and rises to 70-80% overnight. These figures vary with the season, and it depends how airtight the application is (drafty windows and gaps beneath doors can cause the room to cool faster than it should) but the ratios are always similar.
The Dangers of Condensation for Products
The effect unchecked condensation will have depends on your application. Mould and damp are universal and can occur even in the most modern buildings if humid air is allowed to circulate freely. This can affect your products and ingredients if they are exposed to the elements, and damage boxes, packaging, pallets, and shelves even if they aren’t.
Some products are more sensitive to humidity than others. Snacks, for example, require a thorough drying process after they have been baked, giving them the crunchy texture we expect. A small amount of condensation or a high RH can make them damp and soft no matter how long they are dried for.
If your products and ingredients are being spoiled by damp and mould, it can do more than just ruin the quality. If your products need to be recalled due to causing illness or failing quality control from governing bodies, it won’t just cause a delay. You could be faced with large insurance costs due to customer claims. This not only affects your bottom line; it’ll ruin your reputation too.
How Condensation Affects Storage and Machinery
Many food products are stored at sub-zero temperatures to prevent them from spoiling. However, condensation is just as dangerous in your freezer.
Although dew point is no longer an issue, excess humidity will clog up your cold air systems with ice. This will cause blockages, which prevents them from working as well, and they’ll often require regular downtime, sometimes a full 24 hours, so that the ice can be removed. Humidity control prevents ice from building up, so that your freezers can be at 100% efficiency for as long as they’re needed.
It’s hard to run any kind of production line without machinery. Your machines are key to your output, no matter what you specialise in, so they should be looked after. If tens of thousands of pounds of machinery becomes rusty because of uncontrolled condensation, no amount of maintenance will keep them running.
Controlling Condensation in Cleanrooms
Cleanrooms are arguably where condensation can be the most harmful. The production of electronics, or the handling of chemicals for pharmaceuticals and healthcare, can all be ruined if condensation is high.
These applications require strict environmental control, a few degrees too hot or too cold and entire batches of chemicals like lithium could become useless. The same is true for moisture. Any liquid that gains access to circuits will make them hazardous for your team, and at best will stop them from working properly. In lithium battery production, any exposed lithium will react quickly to moisture, turning it into lithium hydroxide and hydrogen.
If this is happening at all, even on rare occasions, you need humidity control systems.
How Humidity Control Prevents Condensation Build up
The solution to all of these issues is to reduce the RH in your application. If humidity is low, condensation cannot build up, and there will be no issues with mould, damp, or excess ice in your freezers.
After over 3 decades of R&D, we say with confidence that desiccant dehumidifiers are the best solution for humidity control. Our desiccant rotors use a silica gel that traps the moisture within your system, which is then evaporated by heat. It’s a far more efficient system than condensing dehumidifiers, which rely on refrigeration.
We’ve designed our industrial dehumidifiers and commercial dehumidifiers to be as energy efficient as possible. All companies nowadays need to be aware of their carbon footprint; we’ll ensure that investing in our systems will put the energy to effective use.
Why Choose DEHUM?
So, now you know which systems will solve your condensation problems, but why should you choose us to provide them?
The answer is simple: we care about your business. All of our clients have unique issues with humidity control, their applications can differ greatly to other companies that provide the same products. That’s why we take the time to learn about your business, your goals, and what you need from us to maximise your efficiency.
With that information in mind, the next step is to assess your application(s). Our experienced team will find the cause of the problem quickly and we can begin designing the best humidity control solution. Everything we create is bespoke, that way it’ll work perfectly for you, and you won’t have to adapt the space to fit it.
Condensation is an issue you aren’t forced to deal with. Our desiccant dehumidifiers will solve your humidity problems, improve the air quality for your team, and ensure every product you create is as good as it can be.
