About Us – E3 Green Technology

Laboratory Safety Problems

In 1990, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) disclosed actuarial figures which showed that laboratory personnel have a lifespan ten years shorter than the normal average^[1].

Part of OSHA's final rule on Occupational Exposure to Hazardous Chemicals in Laboratories published on January 31, 1990, suggested that the problem in large part was due to chemical exposure in laboratories. Since fume hoods are regarded as the primary exposure control devices in laboratories, the OSHA findings can be interpreted to suggest that poor fume hood containment was the source of the problem. It is also likely that this was one of the main reasons why the performance standard for the fume hood tracer gas test was also raised from an allowable concentration of 0.5ppm to 0.05ppm.

China established its first standard for fume hoods in 1999 and set the tracer gas detection limit to 0.5ppm, the same amount used by the 1985 U.S. standard which led to OSHA's adverse actuarial figures in 1990. The 0.5ppm limit in the China standard remains unchanged even to this day. What's even more serious is the fact that the vast majority of Chinese hoods currently in use don't have any third-party testing, with actual containment losses far exceeding 0.5ppm. Most laboratory construction projects, including top-tier universities and first-class research institutions, don't even have fume hood performance safety requirements listed in their bidding documents. This situation poses a serious threat to the health and safety of laboratory workers and is in dire need of immediate correction.

[1] U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Occupational Exposures to Hazardous Chemicals in Laboratories, 29 CFR Part 1910, Federal Register, January 31, 1990.

E3's Innovative Solutions

The advent of E3's breakthrough innovation, the Bernoulli Laminar Air-Curtain Containment Hood, has brought forth a solution for the age-long dilemma of having to compromise between safety and energy efficiency.

The Bernoulli Hood delivers exceptional "zero-spill" containment safety performance while simultaneous providing unparalleled energy efficiency of up to 80%. With the Bernoulli Hood, laboratory owners can enjoy an unprecedented level of HVAC energy cost reduction, drastically reducing their laboratory carbon footprint to achieve an unforeseen level of sustainability.

Laboratory Energy Problems

Under normal operating conditions, a traditional benchtop hood with a width of 1.8 meters will exhaust laboratory room air at a rate of 1620m3/h. For a standard chemistry laboratory, this equates to an air change for the entire laboratory every minute. In order to maintain comfortable indoor working temperatures, the laboratory HVAC system must be equipped with large-sized, high-powered air handling units to supply a near-equal amount of conditioned air into the laboratory to balance the amount of room air exhausted by the fume hoods, and each hood would consume $5,000 or more in HVAC energy costs to operate. If air-conditioned air is not provided to the laboratories, the indoor working conditions would be the same as or worse than outdoors. As a result, laboratory owners using traditional fume hoods are stuck in the purgatory of choosing between extremely high energy costs or extremely uncomfortable working environments.

The current figure estimate for fume hoods in use globally is in the millions. If we were to assume that all of these fume hoods were used in laboratories with conditioned air, the annual energy consumption would be equivalent to tens of millions of tons of standard coal, with electricity dollar costs in the hundreds of billions. With the accelerating growth of global science research and innovation, fume hood usage will rise even further, resulting in even more energy consumption than today.

Countries around the world have been desperately seeking a fume hood that can meet the safety and comfort requirements of laboratories while saving energy simultaneously. For decades, renowned institutions such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, and many others, have been carrying out large-scale fume hood energy reduction initiatives, such as "Shut the Sash". However, these initiatives involve training users with better habits, thus actual and sustainable energy reductions are very limited.

E3's Innovative Solutions