Trafopar SA is the first Paraguayan company dedicated to manufacturing and marketing power transformers, both three-phase and single-phase transformers of medium power and pedestal type, operating in the country since March 1982. 
The industrial plant, as well as the administrative and technical offices, are located in the suburban area of Fernando de la Mora city. 
The company focused on producing products using the standards IEC, ANSI, DIN, NBR, IRAM, depending on the customer's request and needs. Competitiveness and continuous improvement are evidenced through the supply of transformers since 1991 to all MERCOSUR member countries. This company is consistently complying with the best techniques and product quality. 
A raw material mainly used by the company is a wood called Guatambú. It is mainly used to manufacture coil molds of different sizes. The upper and lower chocks formwork for both transformers of the enveloping core and stacked core type. &nbsp;Work with this wood is carried out in the carpentry area available in the Industry. 
The higher the demand for transformers, the higher the generation of wood dust and sawdust residues. Currently, the company acquires 2,500 kg of Guatambú wood every month. Only 40% is transformed into a final product, leaving the remaining 60% as waste, which would be equivalent to approximately 1.23 cubic meters of wood dust and sawdust. To be extracted, separated, and collected. 
Because ventilation is the leading service to keep the workplace safe for workers, it found the need to design an adequate system of extraction, separation, and collection of wood dust and sawdust from industrial woodworking plants. If this system is not used, it will negatively impact many operators concerning their comfort and health, mainly in the carpentry sector. However, without forgetting the other contiguous sectors, wherein the long run would also impact the quality of the products. These would produce a chain effect such as the decrease in product demands that entails a tremendous economic and social impact that would affect the company and the workers and their families who benefit from the source of work generated by the Industry. 
Using a computational tool, such as computational fluid dynamics, to design in a more efficient way the dust exhaust system and wood dust separation system is relatively new in Paraguay. This work represents a case study and a success story in the local manufacturing industry in using such a tool. It is expected to implement more simulation analysis a result of this work.

Design of Ventilation and Separation System for Wood Dust Sawdust in an Industry Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.