Peter Broomes
Sponsored by LMA
Abstract- Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems
used in the clean room environment of biotechnology and drug development
and manufacturing, are extremely energy and water intensive and represent
a significant operating cost for these facilities [1]. HVAC systems
are also the primary source of environmental emissions for the majority
of companies operating within the biotechnology and drugs sector. While
the processes used in drug manufacture have negligible environmental
impact, the power plants, and water treatment facilities which annually
provide the billions of kilowatt hours (kWh) of required electricity
and hundreds of billions of gallons of make up water [5], also produce
tons of CO2, CO, VOC, PM10, SO2, NOX, and in some cases Hg [3]. These
issues of water and air emissions, key concerns of the California Department
of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), are increasingly shared by the CEOs of leading pharmaceutical
and biological products companies, and are appearing in their annual
Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) reporting [4] with greater frequency
and detail. The HVAC system used in the clean room manufacturing environment
has been modeled with a functional unit of $/CFM. Economic and environmental
impacts as a function of specified performance criteria have been captured,
allowing for cost of ownership assessment of both existing and future
systems of varying configurations serving a variety of clean room conditions.
The opportunities for increased efficiency and cost savings of HVAC
systems used in clean rooms are considerable, as much as 50% [5]. The
HVAC model developed may lead to these savings through estimated results,
which are considerably accurate, within 25% of several industry and
government organized case study results [6]. The following report details
a discussion of the HVAC system model, the methodology behind its development,
its capabilities, and limitations.
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