NEC, Birmingham - Stand D50
30th - 31st October 2024

Find Out More
01204 572 900

Computational Fluid Dynamics, The Future of Fume Cupboard Design

A New Approach to Fume Cupboard Development

Clean Air is a leading manufacturer of safety-critical laboratory equipment, and we take our responsibility to our clients very seriously indeed.

Our continuous product development programme demonstrates our commitment to keeping fume cupboard operators and those around them safe and protected from hazardous fumes and gases. We are always seeking to improve our designs and make our fume cupboards as efficient as we possibly can.

It is not only operators we want to protect – we take our responsibility to the environment seriously too.

What are the Challenges?

The British Standard for testing fume cupboards (BS EN 14175) specifies the use of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). It has the highest global warming potential of any known gas.

We have developed a method for accurately assessing a fume cupboard’s performance without the use of SF6. Using SF6 only provides information at specific testing points. There are drawbacks to this:

  • Multiple tests must be conducted, increasing the environmental impact.
  • Any design changes are based on results at a handful of locations instead of looking at the whole picture.
  • Performance at untested points is not checked.
This image shows the velocity distribution of air around a CAV fume cupboard during normal operation. The colour shows the velocity, the arrows show the direction.

What is CFD?

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an advanced engineering method for simulating and analysing how fluids (liquid or gas) behave. This can include how fast air moves or how one gas spreads inside another.

CFD is an ideal tool to use for fume cupboard design. Using CFD, we can determine what happens under a range of scenarios, such as different extraction rates, sash positions or even what happens with equipment inside the chamber!

The Clean Air Solution

At Clean Air, we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint. To do this, we needed a method of fume cupboard development to reduce our dependence on SF6 and deliver efficient, reliable and reproducible results.

Over more than two years we have invested in high-powered computers and advanced software. We worked with Manchester Metropolitan University and Innovate UK to recruit an engineer with a PhD in CFD to develop a method of modelling airflow behaviour in our fume cupboards.

This image shows the distribution of contaminated air 3 seconds after the fume cupboard was filled completely with a contaminant. This modelling demonstrates how efficiently the contaminant has cleared at working level and highlights areas for further development.
In this image we have compared three designs to see which clears best within 4.5 seconds. The results are close, so the embedded graph shows a close up of the final 1.5 seconds. It confirms design C as the most effective.

The Results

We have innovative and evidenced-based insight into air flows within the fume cupboard chamber – both with scientific images and mathematically calculated figures and outcomes.

Clean Air is the only fume cupboard manufacturer which can deliver this advanced technology and implement the improvements it demonstrates are possible.

CFD gives us the opportunity to test our designs against worst-case scenarios, comparing designs and finding ever more efficient ways to contain hazardous fumes. Optimising the containment performance of fume cupboards will enhance the safety of personnel within the laboratory environment.