Twenty-Five Years Later, a Cyclone Still Going Strong

BGI (USA), a worldwide specialist in environmental monitoring, is celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the signature product that launched its success, the Cyclone particle size fractionator, a device the world has come to rely on to safeguard human health by measuring harmful airborne particles. 

In 1988, Dr. Lee Kenny of the Health and Safety Laboratory in Sheffield, UK told American engineer Robert Gussman about advances in calibration for air particulate measuring devices. Gussman had been working with those devices since he was a student some thirty years prior, but had always known the calibration process to take days or even weeks. When Kenny told him of new methods that allowed it to be done in a single afternoon Gussman traveled to her lab to learn more. Thus began a 15-year working relationship that produced several renowned academic papers and a line of products making BGI, Inc., Gussman’s company, an international specialist in environmental monitoring.

BGI’s Cyclones are used the world over to measure a variety of harmful particles, and the company has recently experienced sharp growth in the Asia Pacific region.

As the company celebrates its past, it’s also moving ahead, adding a variety of products to the cyclone line. One of the more popular is the Diesel Cyclone (SCC 0.695), a stainless steel lapel cyclone aimed at diesel soot with a 2.2 lpm flow rate ideal for mining applications and personal sampling. BGI’s GK 4.162 (RASCAL) Cyclone has the highest flow rate of any personal cyclone. Originally developed for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it has become popular as a sampler for Silica.

It hasn’t been all easy for the company, however. BGI recently successfully settled a lawsuit against a former high-level employee over the sale of a knock-off version of one of its most popular Cyclone models.  With sensitive intellectual property documents returned to BGI and production of the knock-offs ceased, new executive Mike Meyer is eager to look ahead while acknowledging how far the company has come.

“BGI undertook the suit to protect the integrity of our industry and preserve our intellectual property rights to one of our most innovative and trusted products,” says Meyer, BGI’s Director of Technology. “We are proud of our role as a 25-year industry leader and we’re looking forward to the next 25.”

Gussman, who still serves as the company’s president, regularly collaborates with Dr. Kenny to this day.

“We talk all the time. It is that spirit of innovation and collaboration that made this company what it is today. It’s just hard to believe it has been 25 years.”