What is a clean room?

The modern concept of clean room was invented in 1960, by definition it is a closed space where air particles like dust, airborne microbes, and aerosol particles of specific sizes are kept under a specific count providing the cleanest area possible.

In this finely controlled environment that is called a clean room, not only the purity of the air is controlled, but also variables like air movement (flow), temperature and humidity.

What does a clean room do?

The essential clean room function is air purification: the incoming fresh air is filtered using HEPA (High-efficiency particulate air) filters or ULPA (Ultra Low Particulate Air) filters, then it is either recirculated through those filters or pushed out in order to get fresh air.

Who needs a clean room?

The list of industries that uses clean rooms is long but for a starter:

• Pharmaceutical Companies.
• Medical facilities.
• Nanotechnology production.
• Scientific Research Facilities.
• Optics and Lens Manufacturing.
• Electronics Manufacturing Facilities.
• Aerospace Industry.
• Laboratories.

Are clean rooms all the same?

Clean room sizes can range from a regular room to an entire facility depending on the industry using it.

Also, the air purity level is classified according to the number and size of particles acceptable per volume of air.

According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO):
ISO 9 classification means the air is not filtered at all and its quality is the same as a regular room. meanwhile, ISO 1 classification means the air particles smaller than 0.1 μm are no more than 10/m3.

Of course, classification systems are not unified globally, e.g., in USA the federal standard was and is still used until this day, where Class 1 is equivalent to ISO 3 and Class 100,000 is equivalent to ISO 8.

How important are clean rooms?

Some industries benefit more than other when it comes to clean room technologies, some even would have never come this far if it wasn’t for this invention.

For example: car manufacturing process can’t be harmed if the air is a little dusty, but a single speck of dust can ruin the long and delicate process of CPU manufacturing.

What are the types of clean rooms?

Normal Clean rooms are Positive Pressure Rooms which one of their uses is to keep vulnerable patients safe from infections and diseases by maintaining a higher pressure inside.

This means air can leave the room and Germs, particles, and other potential contaminants in the surrounding environment will not enter the room.

Alternatively, we have Negative pressure rooms which isolate patients with infectious conditions and protect everyone else from exposure.

They use negative air pressure inside the room to prevent inside air from flowing out, so it traps and keeps potentially harmful particles within the room.

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