By Christiana SchmitzThe Daily Northwestern
Malfunctioning ventilation systems in the Technological Institute sometimes prevent professors from safely using their labs, according to an engineering professor.
Aaron Packman, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, said that his lab has been having problems lately due to “exhaust-related issues.”
“When these (systems) go down, you don’t have the desired level of safe containment of airborne hazards – chemical or biological,” he said. “That’s my concern.”
Packman estimated he has experienced reduced functionality in his lab about 20 percent of the time since June.
In June, a transformer failure damaged a significant amount of Tech’s ventilation equipment, Packman said. But the systems have been fixed or replaced since then, according to Quentin Bruhn, senior project manager for Facilities Management.
There have been about two extended periods that ventilation in the A Wing of Tech has been off since the transformer failure, Packman said.
He added that about once a month, the A Wing ventilation system has gone off for short periods of time.
Around Labor Day weekend, the ventilation system was off for scheduled maintenance, but even afterwards it was not up and running properly for several days, Packman said.
“The point is that a lab exhaust system is an essential safety feature for the containment of airborne hazards,” Packman said. “It should be reliable.”
Some of the problems could have been related to the ventilation system of the building as a whole, Packman said.
In a normal household, 65 percent of the air is fresh air from the outside, said Gary Wojtowicz, director of operations for Facilities Management.
In a lab, he said, that has to be 100 percent.
There is potential for air from one pipe to be carried into another pipe, Wojtowicz said.
“But environmental conditions have to be just right,” he said. “It doesn’t happen often.”
The exhaust pipe for Tech is a few yards away from the pipe bringing fresh air into the building.
Packman and others working in his lab began keeping a record of all of their equipment problems in the past weeks.
“I’ve been asked to communicate this to higher levels of Facilities Management that this is an ongoing problem and how this relates to safety and research,” Packman said.
He said he plans to give the report to Facilities Management later this week.
When told about Packman’s claims, Steve Sowa, associate director of Facilities Management Operations, said, “Generally, if we’re notified that we have a ventilation problem, we’ll research it and find the root cause.”
Complaints about the facilities in Tech are not uncomMonday, said Michael Besancon, associate dean of Administration, Finance and Planning in Tech.
“It’s a system that’s had 10 or 15 years since its last major renovation,” Besancon said.
Facilities Management is currently finishing up minor renovations in the D Wing to replace an air handling unit and to improve air quality issues.
The university has consulted a private company to study wind effects and potential air quality issues in the newer science buildings at the time when those buildings were still in the design process.
“We do air quality assessments – exhaust and air intakes – to avoid the reingestion of exhaust,” said Brad Cochran, Senior Associate of Cermak, Peterka and Petersen Inc.
Studies were conducted on the Nanofabrication Center, the Pancoe Life Sciences Pavilion and on the future Proteomics building.
The research took into account the ventilation of Tech, but only to the extent of how it would affect the other buildings, Bruhn said.
There was “nothing conclusive” regarding the ventilation of Tech itself because there are so many different systems within the building, Wojtowicz said.
Reach Christiana Schmitz at [email protected].
