Italian Ice. Pink Carnation. Berry Blush. Just a few of the hundreds of paints manufactured by Kelly-Moore Paints, the nation’s largest employee-owned manufacturer of paints for residential and professional use sold under a host of branded labels.

Known as “The Painter’s Paint Store,” Kelly-Moore has been manufacturing paint and related products for more than 50 years. Today, the company owns and operates 163 locations across the country. Manufacturing paint involves the mixing of raw materials – both wet and dry – including pigment powder, tints, thinners, oils and resins. Key to the production process is getting the correct consistency and color through strict adherence to recipes that have been created using extensive experimentation.

“To put it simply, manufacturing paint is like mixing a cake batter,” said Ed Johnson, production and maintenance manager at Kelly-Moore. “We mix a variety of wet and dry ingredients based on the specific paint color and type to produce a product with the specific characteristics our customers want, be it hiding power, weather resistance, color, washability, gloss or anticorrosive properties – just to name a few. As we mix dry pigment with other ingredients, a lot of dust is generated. This dust needs to be captured and removed to keep our manufacturing floor properly ventilated and to ensure the accuracy of our final product.”

Kelly-Moore recently installed a second Donaldson® Torit® PowerCore® CPC-12 dust collector to capture and remove the dust associated with the production process – this on the heels of installing its first Donaldson® Torit® CPC-12 dust collector one year ago.

Donaldson® Torit® PowerCore® dust collectors combine award-winning PowerCore filter packs with a new and proprietary compact pulse cleaning system to deliver high filtration efficiencies not usually found in baghouse filtration. Compared to traditional bag-style collectors, the Torit® CPC-12 unit is 50 percent shorter. And just one 7-inch deep PowerCore filter pack replaces six 8-foot long filter bags. “What a difference we’ve seen with the Torit® CPC-12 unit,” continued Johnson. “In addition to increased performance, our maintenance team really likes the benefits of using the PowerCore® filter packs. While the CPC-12s still have their original filter packs – even the one installed last year – we know we will see a significant decrease in maintenance time needed to install the filter packs versus the old baghouse bags.”

Key to the increased air filtration performance is the proprietary Ultra-Web® fine fiber technology used in manufacturing the PowerCore® filter packs. Ultra-Web® media traps dust on the surface of the fluted channel design compared to conventional filter bag materials, which rely on depth loading. This surface loading greatly promotes filter cleaning as better pulse cleaning lowers operational pressure drop and energy use. The fluted channel design also provides a tight, rugged structure to the filter. “The Torit CPC-12s will surely deliver savings in energy, maintenance, space and filter changes,” concluded Johnson. “Additionally, the Donaldson team members were very helpful in making sure the installation was a success and that we knew how to operate the unit. We appreciate their close attention to our needs and recommend their products to others.”​