Back To the Lab Ventilation Future

Cedric Herry, Ph.D., Erlab

In any type of building, regardless of its intended usage, it is necessary to continuously refresh the environment within the occupied spaces. Answering the question of "how" has long been established, but calculating the acceptable "how much" that is also not "too much" has proved elusive or at best a moving target. Maintaining livable spaces has historically been accomplished by various methods; ranging from simply increasing the ventilation rate in ACH or by installing a more exotic system to modulate the ventilation rate based on monitored air quality, referred to as "on demand ventilation".  A typical calculation for air replacement allows for things like occupancy, internal heat gains, infiltration, fenestration and so forth.   In the case of laboratories all of the above must be accounted for plus two more critical factors are added that demand the designer's consideration; air quality due to internally generated pollutants and source ventilation devices like fume hood loads. Might it be time to go back to the basics?  What if there was a treatment technology capable of cleaning the air and removing of the pollutants including toxic chemicals? What if you only needed to exhaust air and supply outside air to replenish oxygen and remove CO2?  What if you could reduce the effective ACH to 2 or less and recycle a percentage of the laboratory air? 

Biography:

Dr. Cédric Herry earned his PhD in Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology as well as a Master's Degree in Environmental Technologies. He is an expert on activated carbon and standardization (French Committee UNM61 and European Committee WG4) and has been the director of R&D for ERLAB, France since 2001.

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