Paint Booth Air Flow Calculator

Paint booth air flow designs.

Paint booth air flow calculator.

Discover the 4 basic types of booth airflow designs that best apply to your paint finishing requirements just select a crossdraft or downdraft airflow design below and learn the fundamentals of the airflow and filtration system. The airflow of the fmp in the work area is a direct result of how the airstream flows through the work area. Typical paint booth air flow values can be read about here or just remember typically a cross draft paint booth will have air flow of about 100 feet per minute based on the width and height of the booth a downdraft will have air flow of about 50 feet per minute. The calculations of a booth are based upon cubic feet of air in the booth and cfm of the exhaust system.

If you want uniform air distribution throughout the booth you should size the air intake filters accordingly. The real issue with air flow in a spray paint booth is having adequate air. Using a velometer thermo anemometer vane anemometer or other airflow measuring device test the airflow at the face of the spray booth. A 14 wide x 9 tall x 26 long spray paint booth will exhaust at least 13 104 cubic feet of air per minute.

Additionally the closer you are to the filterbank the faster the fpm will be in most booths. The three main styles of paint booths are cross draft down draft and side down draft paint booths. Air velocity 312 5 ft2 x 50 ft min 15 625 ft3 min. In sufficiently high concentrations the fumes will cause health problems and may even lead to serious injury.

The first set of tests should be to test the face velocity of the booth. The total flow through the booth 16 x 40 x 50 would be 32 000 cfm. This requires a building at least 17 472 sq ft with 15. Fans to push and pull the air being pushed in and pulled out are done with two types of fans.

Dividing the flow rate by the volume 32 000 8 960 gives 3 5 air changes per minute. For this example let s use 50 fpm. In the past nfpa dictated paint booth air flow needed to be 100 fpm for non electric static coating application downdrafts were usually between 50 100 fpm. Airflow in a downdraft paint booth.

If a downdraft paint booth is 16 feet wide and 14 feet tall typical air velocity in the booth would be 50 to 100 fpm. Running this spray booth for twenty minutes requires 262 080 cubic feet of available air. When spraying paint in a paint booth you need to expel the fumes from the work area. Once you have measured the air flow you will want to see what the original design specification for your paint booth airflow was.

The amount of air flowing into the paint booth must be sufficient to overcome the overspray from the spray gun. Controlling the paint booth air flow going into the booth with relation to the air being exhausted from the booth is critically important to maintain the proper flow of air over the item being painted and remove the over spray effectively. This exhaust fan needs to be properly sized to move enough air out of the work area.