Why Your Business Needs An Air Curtain
Air curtains are devices that are aerodynamically designed to provide strong airflow resistance through entrances or openings that have no physical barrier. A curtain creates a door seal that prevents external inflow of air by positioning its air-outlet, which has a low turbulent air stream, against the incoming air stream.
Air curtains, also known as air doors, are ideally placed above or at the side of the doorways of commercial buildings such as offices, restaurants, shops. These devices can cover up to 6m doors where they release warm air from top to bottom in order to maintain warm, conditioned air within the building. They prevent the exchange of cold and hot air and get rid of draft. During summer, these devices effectively maintain cool air within the building by preventing the entry of warm external air, thus providing a comfortable environment.
These curtains keep the environment clean by creating a strong turbulence that repels flying insects and pollutants such as dust, pollen, and traffic fumes from getting into the business premise. If you are running a restaurant business, you would most certainly want to keep away these insects.
The curtains effectively save energy since they do not allow inflow of external air or outflow of internal air by creating an “invisible door” barrier. Businesses can therefore save on hefty electricity bills using these high-tech devices especially in cases where a well-sealed door cannot be put in place since it would hinder the smooth flow of foot traffic in and out of the premise.
Recirculating curtains have two grills, discharge and receiving grills that can be placed on opposite sides of the door entrance. The discharge grill releases air, which is then collected by the receiving grill. The air is then filtered, and in some cases heated and then returned to the discharge grill to be reused again in a continuous way. The system uses large amounts of air, which is filtered separately. As such, this design has high initial operating, and maintenance costs. The advantage of re-circulating air curtains is that they give low velocity air flows that are desirable in certain businesses such as supermarkets and stores.
The most widely used curtain design is the non re-circulating system. These designs have lower initial operating costs, with nearly no maintenance costs since the air used is not filtered. The system does not reuse air and as such, there is no continuous airflow. The air pulled into the system goes into the fan housing where it is accelerated and then equally dispersed through the discharge nozzle’s entire length. The air streams produced by this system are narrower and have high velocities, which make them very efficient.
The first benefit of installing a curtain in your business premise is that it saves energy. This is because the system reduces the costs incurred from a heating and air-conditioning system by controlling air transfer. Another benefit is that it allows safe and faster traffic flow into the business premise due to open entrances. The types of curtains also increase employee and customer comfort within the business premise through the elimination of draughts. Finally, curtains prevent the entry of insects and contaminants into the building.