2017 - PACE Award Winner

Innovation: By creating a controlled vortex of air in a paint booth, Giffin has improved the process of removing overspray from the air. The customizable innovation means lower energy consumption, less booth cleaning and less paint shop investment.

First Customer: General Motors

Judge's Citation: Efficiently “scrubbing” paint overspray is a longstanding problem in the automotive industry. In an assembly plant existing systems cost millions of dollars a year to filter and condition air for temperature and humidity before being exhausted through the paint booths, while using copious amounts of water in the scrubbing process. GIFFEN used computational fluid dynamics to analyze existing venture scrubbers and developed a new vortex approach. The “ELITE Wet Scrubber” has been installed in assembly and parts plants, where it eliminates unscheduled down time for cleaning. In the typical assembly plant it lowers particulate emissions by 40 tons a year, reduces scrubber energy usage by 23 percent, cuts carbon dioxide by 4000 tons per year while using 50 percent less water.