EDUCATION & SCHOOL FACILITIES TACKLING ENERGY EFFICIENCY ON CAMPUS
The energy consumption of laboratories is often more than three-to-four times that of general teaching spaces or offices on a square metre basis, says Ian Thomas, Product Technical Manager at Air Products’, TROX UK.
Laboratory buildings are responsible for between 50% and 80% of the total energy-related (non-residential) carbon emissions of research- intensive universities, making it difficult to achieve the ambitious sustainability targets set by university management. In older buildings, in particular, the energy consumption of laboratories makes competing in environmental league tables (such as People and Planet’s Green League) especially challenging.
There are a number of ways to tackle this problem, however, without compromising health and safety, or research integrity:
Capitalise on the higher energy efficiency of variable air volume technology for air management. Many laboratories still have inefficient constant volume equipment installed. This has fixed air volumes and fan speeds so, even if demand for conditioned air falls, the supply remains the same, wasting energy.
Maximise fume cupboard energy efficiency. Fume cupboards are major consumers of energy, extracting larger than average quantities of conditioned air. Energy consumption can be reduced, without compromising health and safety, by upgrading to Variable Air Volume extraction. For example, a 900mm wide cupboard with a maximum sash height of 500mm and face velocity of 0.5 m/s would extract approximately 225 l/s of conditioned air from the room. This would be fixed on a constant volume cupboard, whereas on a variable volume cupboard the minimum air volume would be reduced to around 55 l/s when the sash is down.
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Integrate the air management of the room with that of the fume cupboards (or other technical extract) to automatically balance and offset changing requirements, reducing the total supply and extract volumes. For example, if the fume cupboards are open and extracting air, there is not the same requirement for the room system to carry out this process. By scaling down room exhaust air extraction in line with fume cupboard extraction, the room air management system is able to prevent over-supply and extraction of conditioned air from the space.
Install automatic devices to close sashes when fume cupboards are not
in use. It is very common for students to leave sashes up whilst they are away from the fume cupboards, wasting energy. Automatic systems, based on presence detection, can prevent this.
Review air change rates across the site, to identify if rates are higher than necessary in specific zones. Often air change rates are set on a site-wide basis and could be reduced safely in some low risk laboratory areas of the site.
Check whether air change rates could be reduced (with the provision of local overrides) at the weekend, or overnight, when the laboratories are unoccupied?
Discuss the possibility of reducing working sash heights for fume cupboards. Reducing the working sash height from 500mm to 400mm, for example, can achieve a 20% reduction in the air volume at no cost and with negligible impact on working practices.
Optimise fan speeds (by detecting and analysing damper blade positions) to match supply more accurately with demand, reducing overall energy consumption.
Retrofit new control technology to existing fume cupboards. Control technology is advancing rapidly, whilst the ‘hardware’ of the fume cupboard may have a comparatively long lifecycle.
Explore local cooling or extraction devices such as ventilated down flow tables, canopy hoods or fume exhaust ‘snorkels’, which reduce energy consumption by taking heat away at source.
www.troxuk.co.uk twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
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