Dry Booth Conversion



TKS Industrial can replace existing wet scrubber paint booths with a dry booth design,
including dry scrubber paint booths (limestone) or dry filter paint booths (cardboard).

Turn-key Scrubber Replacements

TKS offers design/build services for custom conversions of wet scrubber spray booths to a dry scrubber paint booth for many industrial manufacturing industries.
We have built and converted paint booths to the following types:

  • i-Dry scrubber cardboard filter dry booth
  • limestone scrubber dry booth
  • three-stage filter paint booths
  • two-stage filter paint booths
  • custom spec filter paint booths
  • vertical filter scrubbers
  • horizontal filter scrubbers
  • manual zone paint booths
  • automated/robot zone paint booths
  • dry scrubbers
  • And more.

TKS has designed and built dry scrubber paint spray booths for major Fortune 500 manufacturers, including:

  • Automotive OEMs:
    • Honda
    • Toyota
  • Heavy Trucking / Semi trucks:
    • Navistar Truck
    • Navistar Chassis

A dry scrubber spray booth design include two main types:

  • i-Dry Scrubber Cardboard filters: This type of dry scrubber consists of three layers of filtration, achieving 99% filtration efficiency. First, a cardboard box filter with maximum surface area for capturing large paint particles. Second, a craft paper or paint stop (paint arrestor) filter is used to capture medium-sized paint overspray. It can consist of flame-retardant craft paper or non-flammable fiberglass filters. Third, the final stage of filtration is a bag filter to capture the smallest paint particles and escape the first two stages. Typically an F5 class filter, this bag filter can capture all but the smallest 1% of particles from paint overspray.
  • Limestone scrubber: Using a very fine limestone powder to capture the wet paint particle overspray, this type of dry scrubber can achieve high particulate removal efficiencies (99.9%). A 6-10 micron powder attaches to the paint particles and get stuck to the specialized cylindrical filters that are drawing the exhaust air through. Over time, the powder builds up on the filters and the pressure drop rises, until the system will shoot a reverse pulse of air to knock off all the limestone/paint particles to a bottom hopper for reuse or disposal.

Learn more about the entire Paint System See completed Paint Booth Projects
Automotive Paint Spray Booth with limestone dry scrubber


Toyota dry cardboard filter system


Paint spray booths with dry scrubber

Taikisha's i-Dry: Cardboard Filter Dry Scrubber Paint Booth

TKS offers our unique horizontal cardboard filter underbooth technology, used to capture paint mist overspray.

Advantages of each type of booth scrubber:

  1. Dry Booths: The primary advantage of the dry booth type of paint booth is the reduced humidity during recirculation of air. This requires less reconditioning of the air (just a little cooling, no dehumidification and reheat) and saves significant energy.
  2. Limestone Scrubber: Offering the lowest operating cost among all dry booths, the limestone scrubber system offer the lowest lifetime cost among all options. It does have the highest upfront capital cost, but it can be the most environmentally friendly if owners can find a recycling partner to utilize the spent limestone in a cement kiln, carpet mastic, or other recycling method to eliminate landfill waste from paint booth operations. This dry booth design is the most complex to run and operate, but it offers the most benefits: highest filtration efficiency, best energy efficiency, and lowest operating costs.
  3. i-Dry Scrubber Cardboard Filter: Offering the lowest initial capital cost and the second-lowest operating cost, this is currently the most popular scrubber technology among OEMs in 2022. Due to its simplicity and design flexibility, this technology lends itself to easy conversions from a wet scrubber system to dry. The three stages:Starting with large-gap paper filters, next using a fiber-based bag filter or pocket filter, and finally utilizing a 99% HEPA filter to catch the finest particulates - allows the plant personnel to change each filter as it clogs. Dry filter booths are the simplest type of paint spray booth, but they are susceptible to clogging quickly if the paint applicator has a low transfer efficiency (lots of overspray).

Advantages of dry booths increase many fold when using paint robots to apply the paint to the vehicle. Most robot zones will heavily recirculate the air to save energy by reconditioning less air. The combination of drybooth and 80-90% recycled air provide the greatest benefits for owners.

dry limestone scrubber for paint spray booth
dry limestone scrubber for paint spray booth