Centrifugal fans are sometimes called radial fans or centrifugal blower fans. They have a motor-driven hub which contains an impeller that discharges air into the housing and then directed to an outlet. The centrifugal fan exhausts air at an angle of 90 degrees (perpendicular to the air inlet).

Centrifugal type fans mainly pressurize the air in the blower housing. Compared with axial fans, they produce stable high-pressure airflow, but they deliver less air. They have forward or backward curved impellers for blowing or suction. Centrifugal fans exhaust air from the cowling, which allows them to target a specific area, making them better for cooling a particular part of an electronics application that generates more heat, such as power field effect transistors, digital signal processors, or field programmable gate arrays. As with axial fans, they are available in AC and DC powered models, depending on the application, but centrifugal fans usually require more power to operate than axial fans. Both centrifugal blowers and axial fans produce sound and electromagnetic noise, but the centrifugal model is slightly larger than the axial model. Since both fan designs use motors, the EMI effect of either will affect the system performance of sensitive applications.

Like axial flow fans, DC centrifugal blowers have many different sizes, speeds and floor space. Their design is that there is a housing around the moving parts, which is reliable, durable and hard to damage.

The combination of high pressure and low air volume makes the centrifugal fan very suitable for moving air in concentrated areas such as ductwork or pipes, or for exhaust or ventilation.