All, I have a exisiting sand blast booth (shipping Container modified) inside a building with a dust collector outside feed by a 8'' duct. The booth has no existing hazardous location equipment (except for sealed lighting inside) on the inside or outside we are up grading out equipment. The compound used for the blasting process is an Aluminum bead. Not much found in OSHA or the NEC for this specific process. Whats your view?
View on what?
The weather is rather cold here. It has been below zero for 5 days in a row. My view is that is very cold.
I digress. Presumably you are asking if the inside of the booth should be declared a classified area.
I would ask why would it be? It's possible that some combination of the media used and the material being blasted might create some potential for small conductive metal particles to be formed so that it might have to be classified as some kind of Class II area due to conductive dust.
I have seen a bunch of such blasting tunnels over the years and never seen much of anything in the way of electrical equipment inside them other than lights. They always seemed to be of a pretty serious fixture, but I don't know if that is to protect the environment from the electrical equipment, or vice versa.
My personal opinion is that it is unlikely that a normal blasting operation would be an issue, if for no other reason than there just is not likely to be much in the way of electrical equipment where there might be dust that is at issue.
