A 600 kW heat pump holding automotive paint booths at 26°C and 60% RH

An automotive plant in India needed its paint booths held at 26°C and 60% RH for every hour they are in use, whatever the conditions outside. We installed a 600 kW Tetra Heat Pump for this duty, and it now maintains both the temperature and the humidity in the booths.

A pharmaceutical cleanroom asks exactly the same of its air handling system, i.e. a fixed temperature and a fixed relative humidity, held for as long as the room is in operation. Hence what was done in this paint shop applies equally to a cleanroom also.

Why does a paint booth need fixed temperature and humidity?

Because the whole paint process is set up for one air condition. The paint system, the gun or robot settings and the flash-off times are all tuned to it, and in case the booth drifts away from that condition the film starts behaving differently. By the time the defect is seen at inspection, the body has already gone through the oven.

For this plant the condition is 26°C and 60% RH. Holding either one of these is straightforward, but holding both together, shift after shift, is what makes booth climate a demanding duty.

What we installed

A 600 kW Tetra Heat Pump serving the paint booths, maintaining them at 26°C and 60% RH.

The arrangement depends on each plant’s booths and air supply, so we have not set it out here. If your booths have a similar requirement, our team can take you through how it would work on your own layout.

The same requirement in a pharmaceutical cleanroom

The temperature and relative humidity of a pharmaceutical cleanroom are specified and recorded, and the air handling has to hold both of them for every hour the room is in operation. That is the same job the paint booth is asking for, so a pharma plant reviewing its cleanroom HVAC can take this installation as a reference.

Our pharmaceutical industry page covers the cleanroom HVAC load in more detail, along with the other duties in a pharma plant which a heat pump can and cannot serve.

How this compares with our other automotive case study

Our paint shop pre-treatment case study is a different duty in the same kind of plant. There a 1.5 MW installation heats the degrease and phosphating baths at 50 to 80°C, whereas this one deals with the air inside the booths. An automotive paint shop has both loads, so please look at them together when you scope a project. The full list of automotive duties is on our automotive industry page.

Checking whether your booths or cleanrooms are a fit

Start with three things: the temperature and RH you have to hold, the hours the booths or rooms are in use, and what is supplying the air handling units today. With these our team can tell you whether a heat pump suits the duty.

You can share your details here, look through our other installed projects, or see the heat pump range.