Dedicated to advancing sustainable laboratories globally.
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm CDT
B1: Ventilation Risk Assessment
System Optimization
It's Not Just Air Changes: The Collective Benefit of Risk Assessments in Design Development
It’s not just about the number of air changes! The ventilation risk assessment required by ANSI Z9.5 is considered a “best practice” for laboratory ventilation, and these assessments are a useful tool to determine minimum airflows. However, they also provide additional benefits to lab users, especially when performed as a precursor to optimization projects and Smart Labs program development. Identifying airflow thresholds is only the beginning for realizing the assessment benefits.
Ensuring potential airborne exposures are properly addressed within labs and critical workspaces is always a key consideration for occupational health professionals who are charged with the important task of worker protection. But it is equally important for design professionals who establish the parameters for building mechanical components that support these unique working conditions.
First and foremost is the consideration of protective capabilities afforded by lab ventilation elements–for both the exposure control devices and the laboratory environments–and their relationship to occupant risk. Affirmation of protective capabilities promotes user safety, and opportunities to reduce energy waste may also be identified. The LVRA also considers ECD availability and appropriateness, along with basic ventilation effectiveness concepts, which are instrumental in design development for facility optimization projects.
Implementing Ventilation Risk Assessment and Energy Improvements for a Teaching Lab Renovation
For a recent higher education teaching lab renovation, the design team learned about the instructors and students using chemicals on open benches and completed a ventilation risk assessment to ensure the students and staff were safe. Knowing I2SL had recently published their laboratory ventilation risk assessment (LVRA) for all to use, the team began with this software. The results bumped the air change rate from the desired 4 air changes per hour (ACH) up to 10 ACH. The design team and owner met several times to review the inputs of the LVRA tool and adjust them to better reflect their level of risk. The engineering team compared this effort to the recommendations in ASHRAE and the IMC, arriving at a final recommendation of 6 ACH minimum occupied airflow and 2 ACH minimum unoccupied airflow.
In addition to the risk assessment, the owner had ambitious energy and deferred maintenance goals for this building. While only renovating about one half of the building, the owner elected to fully upgrade the HVAC infrastructure. This included replacement of the main air handling units with a new unit using an Intelligent High Efficiency Energy Recovery System with a one-coil design, and retrofitting the existing air handling unit with the same one-coil design so that 100 percent of the laboratory air will pass through the new energy recovery system. The HVAC infrastructure upgrades allow the owner to continue to renovate other labs within the building without needing any additional infrastructure upgrades after this project.
Lab Ventilation During Emergencies
The demands on laboratory ventilation systems, in normal operation, challenge our construction and maintenance communities. Emergency scenarios take it a few steps further. This talk raises questions that engineers and safety officers need to explore together.
We’ll touch on spills and releases related to the work done in a lab, fire in a lab or in surrounding areas, failures and other emergencies in the HVAC systems that support the lab. For each example, we’ll ask the what’s the most effective way to protect the people inside the lab and out. What combinations of warning and fail-safe operation are most practical? And especially, how do we prevent extreme room pressurization that can impede egress from the lab?
Relevant provisions of standards will be discussed.
B2: Green Chemistry and Solvent Reduction
Green Labs
DOZN™2.1: Quantitative Green Chemistry Evaluator for a Sustainable Future
MilliporeSigma (the life science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) developed and launched DOZN™2.0 in 2017, a unique web-based greener alternative scoring matrix, also known as a quantitative green chemistry evaluator. This tool is based on the 12 principles of green chemistry for customers to evaluate their relative greenness of their processes, which provide a framework for learning about green chemistry and designing or improving materials, products, processes, and systems. DOZN™2.0 scores products based on metrics for each principle and aggregates the principle scores to derive a final aggregate score. DOZN™2.0 calculates scores based on manufacturing inputs, GHS and SDS data which provide a green score for each substance. DOZN™2.0 is flexible enough to encompass the diverse portfolio of products. The DOZN™2.0 system has also been verified and validated by a third party to ensure best practices are applied. Based on customer feedbacks, we upgraded the tool to DOZN™2.1 and launched in December 2022. Through DOZN™2.1 customers now have access to calculate the green scores of their processes and products. This free, web-based tool provides users with more data so that they are properly equipped to improve their sustainability. DOZN™2.1 keeps data privacy top of mind, allowing customers to score their processes/products in a safe and secure manner.
Want an Opportunity for Green Chemistry Education at Your Institution? CU Boulder Student Fellowships and Online Certificate Program
This presentation will discuss how the Green Labs program at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) recognized a need for green chemistry education for students and partnered with Chemistry Department colleagues to create a Green Chemistry Fellowship. CU Boulder students now have the opportunity to learn more about green chemistry through a Green Chemistry Fellowship. Since 2018, this fellowship funds students enrollment in an online green chemistry certificate program offered by the University of Washington (UW). The fellowship is supported by funding from various departments and organizations at CU Boulder, including the Chemistry Department, Environmental Health and Safety, Chemical and Biological Engineering, RASEI, the Graduate School, and Sustainable CU. The program enhances students' educational experience while fostering connections with industry experts and peers in the field. The speaker will share experiences as a student who has completed the online certificate program and how it has positively impacted their education.
Green Lab Champions Fostering Sustainable Science and Measuring Impact
Get an inside look at how Gilead Sciences Inc., has implemented their green labs program. Learn how the green labs program enables the research sustainability champions and the greater corporate sustainability strategy. Get introduced to the program setup, including designing an effective-implementation team, how to engage leadership, how to leverage their sponsorship, and how to define and measure high impact focus areas.
Join the Gilead green lab program manager and research champions as they share the program structure and dive into impactful reduction campaigns. Understand how a plug load campaign led to identifying Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) as a key energy reduction opportunity. Explore how to launch and manage a UPLC sustainable management program focused on energy savings and solvent reduction. The team will share lessons learned from new UPLC shutdown program, consolidation strategies, initiatives to eliminate purchasing wasteful trifluoracetic acid in HPLC water, evaluating the benefits of SoloVPEs, green team communication strategies, adoptions hurdles, and how to maintain momentum in fostering sustainable science.
B3: Smart Planning for Sustainability
Sustainable Design
The Living Laboratory: Sustainable Performance Through Modern Computation
Striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025, the University of Southern California continues to set ambitious goals for sustainability, resulting in rigorous design and construction guidelines and minimum requirements for LEED Platinum certification and aspirations for net-zero energy and carbon.
To achieve these initiatives, USC’s Facilities Planning Management needed to develop a practical approach to LEED Platinum buildings that can be implemented and replicated across campus. This transformational approach is evidenced by the new Ginsburg Hall, a 102,000-square-foot Human-Computational Sciences Building for the School of Engineering that consolidates disparate researchers in an interdisciplinary environment that enhances experiential learning and occupant health and well-being. The building serves as both a living lab and pilot project, demonstrating a path towards achieving USC’s sustainability goals and supporting the university’s functional requirements and pedagogic program aspirations, while meeting the project’s budget.
In this session, leaders from USC and HOK will present their integrated design process and the challenges and opportunities across three points of inquiry—buffer facade, integrated systems, and structural engineering—that enabled the delivery of USC’s first LEED Platinum building.
Creating, Implementing and Tracking a Sustainability Masterplan for an Innovation District
The Cortex Innovation District in St. Louis has been a powerhouse of economic growth and innovation since 2002. Teaming up with renowned institutions such as Washington University and BJC HealthCare, Cortex has become a global hub of entrepreneurship drawing entities in bio, geospatial, and neuroscience. Now, with sustainability at the forefront, Cortex is collaborating with CannonDesign to develop a district-wide sustainability plan with a particular focus on helping enact change within a district of startups, step-ups, and existing enterprises.
Leveraging regional initiatives and utilizing our extensive space for innovation, our strategy focuses on partnerships, successful program adoption, and innovative technologies to reduce our environmental impact while fostering economic growth. The Sustainability Action Plan serves as our guide, emphasizing the importance of strategic partnerships to achieve ambitious sustainability goals. Benefiting from St. Louis's progressive Building Energy Performance Standards, Cortex tracks live building data using Microsoft Power BI, enabling targeted interventions for efficiency, particularly in laboratory-heavy spaces. Through this presentation, we'll showcase how data-driven insights empower us to drive sustainable practices effectively, shaping a greener, more innovative future for St. Louis and beyond.
Accelerating Innovation
In 2015, Syracuse University achieved the Carnegie R1 classification, joining the most elite research doctoral programs in the country. Upon achieving this classification, the University set upon the goal of continuing its strong campus research enterprise.
A plan was commissioned to study Syracuse’s existing facilities to better understand their existing research apparatus. The university undertook an analytical approach to measuring the productivity and functionality of their current research endeavor and the space types available. The facilities were examined under an optimization lens that considered different benchmarks helping align actual need with space allocation.
The result is a framework that allows for adaptation while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Building systems were modernized, introducing heat recovery, while providing new air systems that provided safe environments. Existing buildings were modernized from a code perspective, increasing their useful life. A new building was not built, avoiding all the embodied emissions required to build a new facility.
This presentation will focus on these new adaptable transdisciplinary research environments while explaining the significant carbon benefits inherent in adaptive reuse.
B4: Electrification
Decarbonization
Bioterra: San Diego’s First All-Electric Lab High-Rise
Longfellow Real Estate Partner’s Bioterra project is setting a new standard for sustainability in the San Diego Life Science market. The five-story Class A core and shell laboratory facility that purposefully investigated and integrated design features to maximize its sustainability.
Demonstrating Longfellow’s commitment to sustainable design and enhanced occupant wellness, Bioterra is designed to achieve USGBC’s LEED Gold Rating and FitWel certification. These rating systems, along with Longfellow’s Sustainability and Resilience Design Guidelines, guided and measured critical design decisions. This approach entailed investigating the building aesthetics, site selection, material specification, cost, and engineering systems design.
This presentation will feature the detailed analysis concerning the project’s groundbreaking path toward an all-electric lab building and the many other sustainable features. The analysis will entail the comparison of the performance of a traditional natural gas boiler system and an all-electric system, as well as an all-electric ready system. The results of this analysis directed the final decision for an all-electric facility.
Please join us for this thought-provoking conversation about the development strategies and lessons learned in the journey that formulated this first-of-its-kind sustainable life science research facility in the San Diego area.
Zero Carbon Ready Clinical Research
This presentation will review the initial project goals and strategies for a complex new Clinical Support and Research Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. This significant project will be home to world leading research as well as clinical office and exam spaces, a pre-clinical facility, data centre, daycare and retail spaces.
With goals of complete electrification, as well as limited electrical capacity to the site, we will explore both the Health Authority's ambitions, our options to meet these goals and the major elements used to accomplish those goals. We will also explore some resiliency strategies that are being considered and developed into the facility design to limit impacts associated with flooding, power outages, high heat events and wild fire smoke.
How to Exceed Performance Targets on a New All-Electric Lab: Lessons From the First Five Years of Occupancy
The Integrative Genomics Building is an all-electric lab built at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in 2019. Over the first five years of occupancy, the building achieved and exceeded the target performance developed during the design phase, in part with the help of ongoing commissioning. The energy use intensity (EUI) of IGB was 111 kBtu/ft²-yr in 2023, lower than the energy performance of 117 kBtu/ft²-yr modeled before construction, and significantly lower than the design target of 164 kBtu/ft²-yr.
We will present design decisions that lead to the exceptional performance of this building. We will also touch on specific systems that required extra attention from the ongoing commissioning team, and show the performance metrics that were set up in SkySpark. We will provide lessons learned that can be applied to other buildings especially as it relates to all-electric and energy-efficient building systems and tracking and improving actual performance.
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