As we know, the most important source of contamination in a controlled environment is the human operator. Does that mean that the choice of the material used to build your modular cleanroom does not have any impact on the daily operativity of your facility and eventually the ROI?
Having a state-of-the-art environment, combined with an attractive appearance and a correct material choice, does make a difference in the way the operator will perform his/her activities.
While it is very much accepted that a top level facility must be designed and installed following a modular cleanroom concept, where custom-made, pre-fabricated panels are assembled in a clean, easy and fast way on-site (rather than relying on standard building materials), there is still a lot of debate regarding what is the best material to manufacture the panels with.
A standard modular cleanroom panel is designed as a “sandwich”, with a layer of insulating material (normally aluminum honeycomb or rock wool) wrapped between two skins and finished by a perimetral aluminum frame.
Like the tires are a key element in a car, as they are the part in direct contact with the road, the skin of a panel is a key element in your modular construction, because it will be directly exposed to the controlled environment. Therefore, your wall panel will need to have the best possible skin.
Just to mention the most popular ones:
HPL - High Pressure Laminate for modular cleanrooms
HPL used in the HPL wall panels for modular cleanrooms is a self-supporting material consisting of thermosetting impregnated resins layers and an outer decorative layer impregnated with aminoplastic resins, all bonded together by means of high pressure (9 MPa) and high temperature (150 °C).
The final product presents the following features:
HPL is a sturdy material, highly resistant to scratches and impacts, which translates in lower maintenance costs over time. On top of that:
The 4mm layer is entirely composed by the same GMP-compliant material, which means that even if scratched, which is very difficult the exposed material of the HPL wall panel does not degrade in contact with sanitizing agent used in cleanroom and does not shed any particle in the clean area.
Another big advantage of the HPL wall panel is the ease in milling down the 4 mm surface in order to install accessories such as:
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