Fume Hood Selection for Energy-efficient Labs

This month Lab Design published our article about our research on fume hood selection for energy-efficient labs. We’ve shared an excerpt of the piece here, along with a detailed fume hood selection flow chart.

The fume hood is arguably the single most important safety feature in laboratories. They are also one of the major energy users and can use three and a half times more energy annually than the average American house. For safety reasons these devices cannot be eliminated from the lab, however, there are energy-optimization strategies that can reduce their environmental impact and enhance their performance.

Click to enlarge.

To better understand the energy-reduction options available, at PAYETTE we started by analyzing a number of recent projects to catalog the range of strategies used in past projects to minimize the energy usage from fume hoods. We also sat down with fume hood manufacturers to discuss features currently available in hood design to reduce energy consumption, and reviewed published research on hood energy reduction to leverage industry knowledge. Pulling all this data together, we generated a fume hood selection flow chart to assist project teams with the various choices and options available. This chart walks through the decision points to consider when selecting fume hoods for a project and covers the range of strategies currently available.

To continue to the full article, click here.

Fume Hood Placement. Click to enlarge.