[labnetwork] Face Velocity for Wet benches/Fume hoods?

[Bill Flounders]

Mac,
Our EH&S treats our wet benches as  fume hoods
and requires face velocity of at least 100 feet per minute.
100 - 150 fpm is considered satisfactory.

Several groups have been pushing for improved hood design
to bring air flow requirements down to 60fpm.
Lawrence Berkeley Lab has an extensive program in this area:
http://ateam.lbl.gov/hightech/fumehood/fhood.html
A summary report  of "The Berkeley Hood" (not hoodie) is here:
http://ateam.lbl.gov/hightech/fumehood/Publications.html

Bottom Line - with improved hood design you can definitely
decrease exhaust requirements and achieve significant savings.
But it would not be prudent to just decrease the face velocity
requirement and use that new lower standard with legacy equipment.
If a new (decreased)  standard is defined it will only apply to
new equipment that meets a specific design requirement.

Bill Flounders
UC Berkeley NanoLab



Mac Hathaway wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> What do folks currently consider satisfactory regarding the air-flow 
> face velocity at their fume hoods and wet benches?  Do you have any 
> ASHRAE/ANSI/SEMI-type standards or references that you draw on for 
> this purpose?
>
> The topic came up today in the context of energy savings, lab make-up 
> air, and this sort of thing...
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mac Hathaway
> Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> labnetwork mailing list
> labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
> https://www-mtl.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/labnetwork
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mtl.mit.edu/pipermail/labnetwork/attachments/20120405/d3841c3c/attachment.html>