Straight absorptive silencers have been designed to reduce the noise level of a centrifugal blower. Three-dimensional boundary element method is used for the design of absorptive silencers which consist of a perforated main pipe and a outer chamber filled with fibrous material. The experimental results show that the absorptive silencer reduces up to 8 dB(A) in the overall sound pressure level of the blower and up to 15 dB at the blade passing frequency. It is also found that the gap between the silencer and the impeller may substantially alter the acoustic performance of the silencers. The transmission loss predicted by the boundary element method follows overall trends of the measured insertion loss. The experiments also show that the impact of the silencers on the aerodynamic performance of the blower is minimum.