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Contamination Impact of Station Brush Fire on Cleanroom FacilitiesBrush and forest fires, both naturally occurring and anthropogenic in origin, in proximity to space flight hardware processing facilities raise concerns about the threat of contamination resulting from airborne particulate and molecular components of smoke. Perceptions of the severity of the threat are possibly heightened by the high sensitivity of the human sense of smell to some components present in the smoke of burning vegetation.On August 26th, 2009, a brushfire broke out north of Pasadena, California, two miles from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Station Fire destroyed over 160,000 acres, coming within a few hundred yards of JPL. Smoke concentrations on Lab were very heavy over several days. All Lab operations were halted, and measures were taken to protect personnel, critical hardware, and facilities. Evaluation of real-time cleanroom monitoring data, visualinspection of facilities, filter systems, and analysis of surface cleanliness samples revealed facility environments andhardware were minimally effected.Outside air quality easily exceeded Class Ten Million. Prefilters captured most large ash and soot; multi-stage filtration greatly minimized the impact on the HEPA/ULPA filters. Air quality in HEPA filtered spacecraft assembly cleanrooms remained within Class 10,000 specification throughout. Surface cleanliness was inimally affected, as large particles were effectively removed from the airstream, and sub-micron particles have extremely long settling rates. Approximate particulate fallout within facilities was 0.00011% area coverage/day compared to 0.00038% area coverage/day during normal operations. Deposition of condensable airborne components, as measured in real time, peaked at approximately1.0 ng/cm2/day compared to 0.05 ng/cm2/day nominal.
Document ID
20150008507
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Carey, Phil
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Blakkolb, Brian
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
May 20, 2015
Publication Date
August 1, 2010
Subject Category
Environment Pollution
Meeting Information
Meeting: SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: August 1, 2010
End Date: August 5, 2010
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
airborne particulate contamination
smoke
airborne contamination
ash

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