Water Filtration Dust Collection?

[Alan Schaffter]

I hate to burst the bubble (pun intended)- it won't work!!

Many prohibitive problems-

First, as a few mentioned whatever type of system- bubbler or centrifugal system- a significant amount of dust, especially fine dust, will not be captured, either because it is in a bubble or just not in contact with water. Hukah, farts in a bathtub, boat exhaust, etc. etc.

You will catch some dust but have a terrible mess- a (big) tank of dirty water to dispose of. It would be absolutely imperative to have a standard cyclone to remove the heavy dust and chips first or you will have a terrible soggy mess that would weigh many times what dust and chips alone would weigh. Picture dumping that vs dumping a dust bin!

Lastly, you are all forgetting how a DC works and principles of air flow. You want to collect dust at the source so you don't breathe it while standing at the source!!! For that you need a lot of CFM - as much as 600 CFM for some woodworking machines. If you add some sort of water filter you will be adding a prohibitive amount of static pressure resistance, and therefore killing CFM!!! Unlike a shopvac which will pull 80"-100" of water (but only 100-200 CFM), typical DC's with their material handling blowers only pull around 10" of water- that means if you try to use a DC with bubbler and a big drum of water, you will kill ALL CFM if it is deeper than 10"!!! If you use a shallow drum less than 10" deep you still limit CFM, plus you would be making one heck of a mess as the bubbles splash everywhere!! - picture a little kid blowing air through a big straw into his glass of milk!!!

Rather than trying to find a way to filter all the dust from the air, find a way to discharge it outside without a filter.

If you don't need CFM and can wait for the air to be cleaned (think ambient air cleaner) AND have decent SP suction (most air cleaners don't) to pull the air though a wetted filter media, it might capture fine dust better than a dry filter. However . . . then you need to figure out how to clean and reuse the filter. Ventilation filters on Navy ships were made with thin metal mesh media (picture Brillo pad) that was sprayed with oil to help it capture the dust. After the air cycled through the filter many times it eventually captured a reasonable amount of dust. They didn't do a good job filtering but any dust caught in the oil stayed there until the filter was removed and cleaned in a bath once a week.