Extreme Cold Weather Alert = Extreme Low Humidity Alert

This week, chilly wind, snow storm and low temperature alerts were in the all provinces of Canada and Northern States of the United States. Decreasing of the external temperature that dries outside air and increasing of heat inside the production facilities cause dropping of humidity level and maximizing productivity of humidification system.

The humidification system capacity becomes crucial feature to overcome issues caused by dry air. The right calculation of the amount of water that the humidification system should provide is a key number in choosing a right model that will help to avoid static issues and to keep humidity at RH+/-50% according to digital printing machines requirements.

Based on the Psychrometric chart that shows how much water should be added to the air coming from outside temperature -20 C (-4F) to inside +20 C (68F), the humidification system has to supply up to 90 L (24 Gal) per hour for the standard facility of 17K sq f (12 f height) or 300 L (80 Gal) for 60K sq feet (12 f height). It means that any Non-industrial unit (from HD, Amazon or other “low quality-price” models) will never ever be able to bring the humidity back to RH 50% and to keep it at constant level during the cold weather period.

Old style pressed-air system that came from 90s’ should work according to the standards but energy consumption but hydro bills will be up to 1000% more in comparison with modern high-pressure system.

Nadiia Tuzova, Verso Solutions Corp, www.versolutions.ca