SAFE AIR IN LABORATORIES
SAFE AIR IN LABORATORIES
Whether in the field of chemistry, pharmacy, biology or medicine: in laboratories, people work with a wide variety of contaminants and organisms and therefore are often exposed to increased hazards.
Working with different equipment creates heat loads and a high energy input. Due to this, the demand on room air conditioning is increased:
CONSULTING & PROJECT PLANNING
Denny Kaulfuß
Sales Manager Filter Technology Germany
Phone: +49 177 / 297 08 27
The requirements for air distribution systems in the laboratory are particularly high. To avoid exposure to pollutants, large airflows must be exchanged in a short time: According to DIN 1946-7, the standard is an air change rate of 8 times the room volume per hour (this might differ from country to country). Due to the heat loads caused by laboratory equipment, cooling of the rooms is also often required in summer, as well as in winter. At the same time, it is important to avoid drafts and high temperature differences in order to ensure highest comfort for employees. To fully meet all requirements, intelligent air distribution that adapts to the specific conditions of your laboratory is essential.
Several aspects determine a customised air distribution concept:
Various airflow strategies are available for air distribution in laboratories, such as mixed air (turbulent flow), laminar flow with targeted low turbulance and classic laminar flow diffusion.
With mixed ventilation, the supply air is introduced into the room via highly inductive diffusers. This creates turbulent air flows so that the introduced air mixes with the indoor air.
Laminar flow describes the low-turbulence supply air intake via laminar diffusers. In this case, the supply air has only a low velocity and displaces the polluted room air instead of mixing with it. A special type of displacement flow ventilation is Displacement flow (with supply air discharge usually near the floor), in which the cooler supply air is brought into the room and the air exchange takes place through natural thermal draft.
With turbulent mixed ventilation, the laboratory air can be easily controlled by the placement of the customised supply air diffusers.
The introduction of supply air creates a diffuse airflow that mixes indoor and supply air.
This compensates for temperature differences and ensures thermal comfort. At the same time, the air change rate intended for the laboratory is ensured by the air exchange.
The PROCONDIF® ventilation system is particularly suitable for laboratories. With low-turbulence air flow, large volume flow rates with medium temperature differences can be introduced at the same time.
The 30° inclination of the jet guidance in the PROCONDIF® air terminal devices prevents the Coanda effect by creating a bell-shaped air distribution in the room without swirling the incoming air.
As a result, a controlled ventilation of the laboratory rooms is ensured, avoiding any induction of air from the fume cupboard into the room.
Low turbulence laminar flow (LF) is characterised by a uniform velocity profile and almost parallel flow lines.
In this process, the airflow velocity is rapidly reduced, creating an almost low-turbulence air curtain with low velocities.
Low-turbulence laminar flow is used where processes are particularly sensitive, e.g., in high-precision scales.
The air terminal devices and their placement in the laboratory are the most important components of the ventilation system to ensure comfort, as well as compliance with all safety standards at the same time. The specific conditions of the laboratory are decisive for the choice of suitable elements.
During daily work in laboratories, airflow and room pressure conditions can change quickly. This not only has an impact on work processes, but also on safety, hygiene and workplace comfort. The requirements for the systems to be used are correspondingly strict.
Air management describes the totality of all related processes in the laboratory. This includes:
In addition, air management describes the networking of all relevant components to form a highly functional overall system. An intelligent air management system with short reaction times, precise drives and control algorithms is therefore the basic requirement for safe and trouble-free operation in laboratories. Our smart solutions intuitively controls volume flow rates, room pressure and the removal of high thermal loads while constantly complying with safety and comfort criteria. We emphasize energy-efficient processes that, for example, automatically reduce system operation to a necessary minimum as soon as no work is being done in the laboratory.
Our innovative solutions are individually adapted to your laboratory requirements - and you benefit from many years of practical experience. Hundreds of laboratories around the globe are already working with our trusted and approved air management systems.
Air management systems in laboratories must be able to adapt quickly and precisely to prevailing air conditions. Equipment used such as safety workbenches and fume cupboards lead to constantly changing conditions in the room due to their variable exhaust air volume volume.
Here it is important to keep the entire supply and extract air in balance without losing workplace comfort and thermal comfort.
Maintaining the indoor air balance is a complex task, because monitoring and ensuring the required parameters must be guaranteed at all times. Any currents that occur must be accurately recorded and immediately transmitted to sub-systems and components so that they can readjust themselves based on the determined setpoints.
However, fume cupboards are not the only extract air consumers in laboratories. In addition, there are room extract air, hoods, point extraction systems, safety cabinets, devices with their own extract air and much more.
The TROX EASYLAB system determines all volume flow rates of the active consumers and adds them up to a total extract air. In this way, the required supply air volume can be determined by absolute difference. In addition, the maintenance of the required room pressure is safeguarded, which is also influenced by all occurring volume flow rates.
Targeted negative pressure prevents contamination and undesired airflows or undesired particles from entering a room.
TROX provides systems which ensure that the correct negative pressure is maintained.
Complex room balancing and room monitoring functions are likewise possible.
Pressure cascade with uniform reference pressure When controlling the pressure of adjacent rooms, it is important to measure the air pressures of the individual rooms against the same reference pressure.
High energetic demands for buildings leading to heat loads which are hardly ever dissipating via the building façade. In addition, laboratory devices generate large amounts of waste heat. These heat loads must be removed as efficiently as possible without sacrificing comfort and safety.
If these thermal load are removed by air, large amounts of fresh air and energy are required. In addition, large ducts would have to be installed in the ventilation systems to transport the air. A much more energy-efficient method is to remove the heat via local air-water systems. Water has a high thermal conductivity and can therefore carry a higher thermal load than air. Besides, normal cooling water pipes are used instead of large air ducts. Air-water systems not only save energy, but can also be installed in a more space-saving way than fresh air systems.
Flexible expandability meets easy handling: Our smart LABCONTROL system ensures that reliably stable room air conditions prevail in the laboratory and that individual ventilation components work together in an optimum manner.
Interlinked sub-systems record and evaluate all relevant data. The entire system is then controled according to predefined parameters.
The LABCONTROL controller EASYLAB was developed especially for use in highly sensitive areas. The system ensures safety for people and the environment at all times, as well as workplace comfort for laboratory personnel. Especially when complying with norms and safety standards, it is important that the components of an air management system fit together perfectly and communicate with each other.
Due to the modular design of the EASYLAB system, all system components can be adapted or extended to suit the specific project requirement.
With our intuitive EasyConnect software, you can get your rooms up and running in no time.
EasyConnect: For easy and intuitive commissioning of your laboratory
Laboratories and clean rooms pose the greatest challenge to air management systems.
LABCONTROL is a modular system that can be tailored to whatever customers need. And so easy to install with plug and play.
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Efficient ventilation and air conditioning systems are indispensable in laboratories. With our smart solutions, you receive comprehensive overall packages that are not only individually adapted to your requirements, but are also cost-efficient thanks to the perfectly coordinated components and sub-systems from a single source.
The components fit together seamlessly and guarantee optimum function. Our air management systems are modular and therefore flexibly expandable. Subsequent adjustments and optimisations due to changed framework conditions can also be easily realised at any time. With our extensive portfolio, we create a system tailored to your requirements and premises and provide you with comprehensive advice from planning to implementation and maintenance. In this way, TROX creates unique air distribution solutions for every requirement and every safety level.
TROX thinks forward and is therefore already thinking about tomorrow today. Energy is used effectively with our systems so that costs remain low and the effort involved in air treatment and transport is made as efficient as possible. Intelligent volume flow control detects changing conditions in real time so that the systems always provide optimum ventilation according to demand. Air volume flow rates and fan speeds are adapted to the respective demand, resulting in an optimisation of the entire ventilation system.
If no work is being done in the laboratory at the moment and there is also no need on the product side, it is energetically efficient to automatically reduce the air change rate. In this way, it can be ensured that no costs are incurred for unnecessary air change rates. Our smart system solutions are also capable of individually closing off air terminal devices across temporarily unused activity areas. This means that the supply air flow rate can be reduced to a feasible level without a negative effect on comfort and performance of the air terminal devices.
The environment also benefits from our sustainability approach. With our closed-loop air management systems, we minimise energy use and reduce the energy requirements of laboratory operation to a necessary minimum.
The concept of sustainability is lived by TROX - for the environment, for the customers, for innovation. TROX, for one, has committed itself to becoming carbon neutral by 2040 at the latest: carbon neutral production, installation, distribution and action.
Sustainability goes beyond carbon neutral production, though. It means making products that can be repaired when broken, continuously developing systems, reusing raw materials and organising logistics as energy-efficiently as possible, and experiencing a leadership culture committed to sustainability. At the same time, TROX wants to meet the quality demands of the customers and the company at all times.
Ventilation and air conditioning are energy-efficient only if they meet the following requirements:
The ventilation requirements in nine out of ten laboratories today are no longer determined only by constantly changing volume flow rates, but also by waste heat, which is predominantly generated by technical devices. These loads must be removed in the most energy-saving way possible, while ensuring a pleasant indoor climate - both for the process and for the people working. This requires large amounts of fresh air in conventional centralized systems. This is a comparatively expensive and only conditionally efficient way of controling the temperature, because with an all-air system, large air volume flows are required for space cooling, which are associated with correspondingly high energy costs for air treatment and distribution.
TROX has made this process more energy-saving - with air-water systems. Water has a much higher thermal conductivity than air and can therefore transport heat loads more efficiently, resulting in lower power consumption for the same cooling capacity. The water is repeatedly treated and used several times so that every resource is ideally used with this method as well.
Taking into account the diverse, varying requirements in laboratories, a concept was developed that integrates all important functions in one complete system: the TROX UBox. It can respond to different conditions with real demand-based ventilation and air conditioning, dissipate thermal loads in an energy-efficient manner and take into account different pressure situations. The UBox can be easily integrated into existing systems. Compared to conventional solutions, energy savings of up to 50% can be achieved.
The UBox was installed in a Swiss laboratory for the first time. Depending on how much fresh air is required for a zone, it takes in more or less room air, which is then mixed with the fresh air and supplied to the room again. Heat loads are energy-efficiently dissipated with water thanks to the integral heat exchanger. The EASYLAB smart control system was installed for demand-based balancing of supply and extract air volume flows. EASYLAB also controls pressure conditions if several rooms have to be kept separate with different room pressures.
Ventilation planning in the laboratory must meet various requirements. Below, you will find the most important standards and guidelines that ensure the safety of laboratory personnel at all times and prevent potential health hazards.
| Laboratory type | EN 14175 | DIN 1946 TS 17441 | Bio Saftey EN 12128 / WHO Biosafety manual |
GMP |
| Chemical laboratories | ||||
| Physical laboratories | ||||
| Biological laboratories BSL1 – 4 |
||||
| Pharmaceutical laboratories | ||||
| Pharmacies | ||||
| Cleanrooms | DIN EN ISO 14644-1 | |||
| Animal husbandry |
VENTILATION SYSTEMS IN LABORATORIES: TS 17441
TS 17441 provides an overview of the most important exhaust air equipment in the laboratory and lists all types of air that must be taken into account during planning (fresh, supply, extract, recirculation, exhaust and, if necessary, secondary air). Rooms that are related to or connected to the laboratory (e.g., pressurised gas cylinder rooms) must also be included in the overall organisation of the ventilation system. Furthermore, the risk assessment may result in further safety-related requirements for the supply and extract air.
The EN 14175 standard regulates constructional aspects of fume cupboards and specifies protection goals and safety requirements. In addition, reference is made to the consideration of disturbing influences, such as draughts in the room or passenger traffic. Among other things, the following shall be guaranteed:
This standard specifies the safety requirements for laboratory cabinets. This includes safety cabinets for flammable liquids and cabinets for pressurised gas cylinders.
DIN 12925 also covers the testing and operation of these laboratory facilities.
EN 1822 regulates the classifications of industrial air filters. A distinction is made between three groups of filters:
Our TROX systems have fire dampers, volume flow controllers and special fans for potentially explosive atmospheres, the safety of which has been confirmed by ATEX certificates. Even before a potentially dangerous gas concentration arises, the laboratory air is cleaned and removed by automatic controls.
ATEX defines essential health and safety requirements and conformity assessment procedures to be applied before products are placed on the EU market.
The GMP rules are laid down in national and international regulations. The core points of GMP include the requirements for hygiene, premises, equipment, documentation and controls.
Laboratories work with a wide variety of substances, organisms and toxins. When handling such demanding materials, safety and compliance with applicable (hygiene) rules are paramount in order to avoid health hazards. The protection of people is the focus at all times. Depending on the security level of the laboratory, the type and scope of the applicable regulations vary. The respective premises are classified into so-called Biosafety Levels (BSL), which build on each other: BSL 1 is the lowest and BSL 4 the highest safety level.
The different requirements of different laboratory types and safety levels must also be taken into account when planning air management. We are happy to be your reliable partner when it comes to equipping your premises with fully comprehensive and individual corresponding systems. Benefit from the many years of experience of our TROX experts and receive the best support from laboratory planning to maintenance, even for demanding hygiene and safety requirements.
Biosafety Level 1 laboratories deal with known substances and work equipment that pose a minimum risk potential to laboratory personnel and the environment.
Most laboratories in Germany belong to the Bio-Safety Level 2 category. Infectious substances or toxins with a medium risk for employees and the environment are worked with in corresponding premises. The corresponding substances become dangerous if they are accidentally inhaled, swallowed or brought onto the skin.
In addition to the regulations for BSL 1, the following further safety standards are observed in BSL 2:
Biosafety level 3 is used for laboratories that work with hazardous substances. The substances can cause severe and potentially fatal diseases via the respiratory tract.
Therefore, in addition to the safety measures of BSL 1 and 2, the following points are added:
Laboratories with Biosafety Level 4 are high-security laboratories. Here, micro-organisms are studied that are transmitted by aerosols and can cause severe to fatal diseases in humans for which there are no vaccines or treatments yet.
In addition to the measures in BSL 1-3, the following factors must be observed:
Fume cupboards and safety cabinets are essential for minimizing risks in laboratories. They ensure a safe environment by removing contaminated or potentially harmful air. Hazardous work is limited to the area in the fume cupboard, so the devices provide additional protection against splashing liquids, flying particles and fires.
Safety cabinets differ from classic fume cupboards in the filter classes used. Here, the supply and extract air is cleaned via high-performance filters to ensure sterile work.
In order to protect the people working in the laboratory, the daily work there with substances hazardous to health must take place under the highest safety standards. Our LABCONTROL "EASYLAB" air management system ensures that gases, aerosols and other contaminants are extracted, diluted and, if necessary, filtered directly at the point of origin. In recirculation systems with appropriate filter stages, the purified air can be safely returned to the laboratory. As a result, fume cupboards and safety cabinets not only protect laboratory personnel, but also the environment and the immediate surroundings.
Note: TROX does not sell laboratory furniture. We only develop and sell the ventilation components required to operate fume cupboards or safety cabinets.
Learn more about fume cupboards and variable control options adapted to your laboratory needs.
Safety cabinets with different protection levels meet even the most stringent requirements in the laboratory.
To remove contaminated air from the laboratory in the shortest possible time, fume cupboard systems must act fast and sensitively. Only in this way can the premises be protected from a contaminant outbreak. The LABCONTROL air management system with integrated EASYLAB controller reacts in the millisecond range and has a particularly fast action time of less than three seconds. This action time was specified in the EN 14175 fume cupboard standard and certified by an independent testing institute. For comparison: standard controllers usually have an action time of 120 seconds.
The high demands on a control system for fume cupboards also result in increased requirements for the downstream components in the room, such as room supply and extract air. As soon as a fume cupboard or safety cabinets acts, the air management system must detect the change and adjust it according to the desired strategy. In the EASYLAB system, this is implemented fully automatically by the integrated room management controller - all components in the room are networked via a common patch cable and therefore communicate with each other fully automatically, a complex integration of data points during commissioning is not necessary here. The room air conditions specified in DIN 1946-7 are thus ensured at all times while, at the same time, the air change rates are kept as low as possible.
Air hygiene is essential for daily practice in laboratories, it is therefore necessary to ensure sufficient air change rate and thus fresh air. A mechanical ventilation system is indispensable to ensure the required air change rate at all times and also to meet the energy requirements for buildings. Ventilation systems that ensure a hygienic, safe and yet pleasant working environment have been specially developed for use in laboratories. Numerous factors have to be taken into account, such as
We at TROX have understood this complexity and therefore offer customised systems for the demands of different types of laboratories. Air hygiene is our top priority.
Discover now the different laboratory standards that TROX serves
Especially when using and processing chemicals, solvents and biological samples, a clean working environment is of elementary importance. This is the only way to prevent bacteria and micro-organisms from multiplying in the air and causing health damage or contamination of samples.
But clean air can also increase work productivity and the well-being of laboratory staff. A comortable working environment definitely also includes the appealing design and construction of ventilation elements. These aspects increase the feel-good factor at the workplace not only through the design, but also significantly through the control of the air intake and speed in the room. Draught and cold phenomena are therefore avoided despite regular air changes and high thermal loads. A customised ventilation system increases air quality and employee productivity in equal measure and is therefore essential for daily work in the laboratory.
In addition to contamination caused by accidental spills, splashes or the improper storage of materials, it is also important to keep the air free of pollutants in the laboratory. Contamination of samples or other working materials should always be reliably prevented.
Compliance with hygiene standards additionally has a direct influence on the quality and results of the employees' work. Strict air hygiene protects them from potentially hazardous substances. For example, work in the laboratory can result in the release of gases or vapours that are hazardous to health, which must be hygienically cleaned and removed as quickly as possible via air filter systems. Only in this way can possible health hazards via the breathing air be prevented and the ability of laboratory personnel to work with a high degree of protection be ensured.
Our TROX systems ensure that air hygiene is maintained in the laboratory at all times. We also offer correspondingly individual air filter solutions for clean rooms - tailor-made for your requirements.
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We are here for you
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Our department for Service-Requests will contact you asap.
For general question regarding products or services you can also call:
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