The dust found in a helicopter engine is extremely fine. Can extremely fine dust be separated with a Centrisep® EAPS?
Yes. The dust particles that reach an engine intake are very fine. Large particles become disturbed and airborne by the turning rotor’s downwash; these larger types of particles settle very quickly. Only the very small particles – typically from 1-150 microns – travel high enough in the air to be re-captured by the main rotor and fall on the engine intake. To validate the performances of our Centrisep EAPS, we use a standard dust called “ISO Coarse Test Dust”. It has been proved in a number of field tests where samples of the air entering the engine were collected by means of a probe, or bag filters, showing that the particle distribution of the actual dust was very similar to SAE Coarse Test Dust. Twelve percent of the weight of this dust ranges from 0-5 µ, which is smaller than a red blood cell! We are still able to separate a percentage of these microscopic particles. And to address the specific problems of lime spraying by helicopters on forests suffering from acid rain, we have ev
