Hospitals
Hospitals represent a particular challenge for air conditioning and ventilation technologies. Along with clinical concerns, the main priority is hygienic cleanliness in sensitive areas such as operating rooms or intensive medicine. Air conditioning is crucial for physiological reasons.
A good room climate helps patients to recover quickly and creates important working conditions for employees, e.g. during an operation.
An optimal room climate is created by restricting the level of germs in the air in areas that need to be particularly protected such as operating theatres and the instrument table. Ensuring the required air flow between the rooms is also very important. Furthermore, restricting the narcosis concentration and other substances as well as removing thermal loads in order to create the best room temperature is vital.
Laboratories
HVAC requirements for laboratory facilities are fundamentally different from those of commercial office spaces. Laboratories require a fixed amount of ventilation air to maintain safety. If active chilled beams are applied to laboraties where the duct sizing and air handler sizing are typically driven by cooling requirements, significant savings are possible — in many cases, the air duct system can be downsized to handle less than half the air. Chilled beams also have the added energy saving benefit of eliminating or reducing the need for reheat in labs and because cooling is accomplished with pumped chilled water instead of blown cold air, the chilled beam system requires less energy for cooling than a typical all-air system.
