[labnetwork] Room Pressurization During a Fire Alarm

[Jacob Trevino]

Hello All,

We are so very close to having our contractor hand over our new building and cleanroom, however an issue has come up over cleanroom pressurization during fire alarms. Currently in a fire alarm event, the building management system ramps the cleanroom supply air down, while maintaining hood exhaust rates, thus bringing the room into negative pressure. We have been told that this was done to comply with NYC Department of Building code, which requires rooms to be negative relative to ?corridor pressurization (in the event of a fire).

The cleanroom team argues the negative pressure has two very negative implications. The first and most important is that with hoods still pulling air at normal rates, doors leading out of the cleanroom may become suctioned shut and difficult to open in the event of fire. Secondly, negative pressures are obviously bad for the cleanliness of the cleanroom.

We would like to throttle the system down to maintain a very light positive pressure in the event of a fire alarm, however we are still meeting a good deal of resistance from building designers who have never worked with a cleanroom before.

I am very curious to learn what your pressurization scheme might be in the event of a fire alarm. Do you have any references you have found valuable (people, organizations, documents)? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Jacob

-----------------------------
Jacob Trevino, PhD
NanoFabrication Facility Director
The City University of New York (CUNY)
Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC)
Tel.  (646) 664-8914
Fax. (646) 664-2965
Email: Jacob.Trevino at asrc.cuny.edu<mailto:Jacob.Trevino at asrc.cuny.edu>
Web: http://asrc.cuny.edu/




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