What is a dental central suction system?

The NHS England guidance HTM 02-01 (2026) treats dental vacuum as its own system: medical vacuum should not be used to extract bodily fluids during dental procedures, and the dental vacuum system should never be considered an anaesthetic gas scavenging system. ISO 7396-1 also leaves dental vacuum outside its scope.

Types of system

• Dry: an air separator removes debris, sputa and cooling water from the airflow and sends them to a drain before the air enters the vacuum pump; separator and pump are two different devices.
• Semi-dry: the same separation, but pump and separator are combined in one device.
• Wet: a filter removes the larger solids, then air and liquid enter the vacuum pump together and are separated there.

An amalgam separator should be included in every system, and electrically driven side channel pumps are frequently used (HTM 02-01, 11.11 and 11.15).

How it is sized

HTM 02-01 sizes high volume systems on 300 L/min at each chair cannula connector. Up to ten chairs, all chairs are assumed to work at once; above ten, 60% of the remaining chairs are assumed in use. The total demand is Qvac = (10 × 300) + [(n − 10)(0.6 × 300)] L/min, where n is the number of chairs; the HTM example gives 4800 L/min for a 20-chair system.

• Pressure loss between plant and cannula connector: at most 6 kPa for large systems (above 7000 L/min) and 3 kPa for smaller ones.
• Pumps able to reach a maximum negative pressure of 25 kPa (76 kPa absolute), normally set to a maximum operating negative pressure of 18 kPa (82 kPa absolute).
• Dental teaching schools: all chairs in the teaching department may be in use at once.
• Practices with typically fewer than five chairs may keep self-contained suction systems.

HTM 02-01 cites BS EN ISO 10637, which classes as high volume a system taking in more than 250 L/min at each cannula connector.

ULTRAVAC DENTAL

ULTRAVAC DENTAL is the Ultra Controlo central wet suction system for dental clinics and schools. It uses SCB side channel vacuum pumps with speed variation, a QuVAC controller that rotates the pumps and starts them progressively, and stainless steel vacuum stabilisation tanks. The datasheet sizes its models by the number of chairs at 100% and at 60% simultaneity, from the V300 (1 chair) to the V18000 (60 chairs at 100%, 100 chairs at 60%).