Vortex Ventilation in the Laboratory Environment

Assured containment at low airflow has long eluded the users of ventilated enclosures including chemical fume hoods used throughout industry. It is proposed that containment will be enhanced in a hood that has a particular interior shape that causes a natural vortex to occur. The sustained vortex improves the containment of contaminants within the enclosure at low airflow. This hypothesis was tested using the ASHRAE 110 tracer gas test. A known volume of tracer gas was emitted in the hood. A MIRAN SapphIRe infrared spectrometer was used to measure the concentration of tracer gas that escapes the enclosure. The design of the experiment included a written operating procedure, data collection plan, and statistical analysis of the data. A chemical fume hood of traditional design was tested. The hood interior was then reconstructed to enhance the development of a vortex inside the enclosure. The hood was retested using the same method to compare the performance of the traditional interior shape with the enhanced vortex shape. In every aspect, the vortex hood showed significant improvement over the traditional hood design. Use of the Hood Index characterizing the dilution of gas in an air stream as a logarithmic function indicates a causal relationship between containment and volumetric airflow through an enclosure. Use of the vortex effect for ventilated enclosures can provide better protection for the user and lower operating cost for the owner.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene for the following free supplemental resource: a data collection spreadsheet, data analysis, and data collection procedure.]