Case Study

Global Food Processing Company:
Laboratory Controls Solution

This case study refers to laboratory controls for a global food processing company with operations in Ireland. The R&D Laboratory houses the global quality services team for beverages. 

In 2011, Sirus was engaged to provide a reliable laboratory controls solution for their R&D Laboratory to be integrated within the building automation and control system. Technical facilities were required to protect lab personnel against potential hazards while also maintaining a comfortable building climate in an energy efficient manner.

The Laboratory Controls Solution

Sirus provided a laboratory control solution with a complete and comprehensive building automation system, controlling and monitoring for the laboratory fume hoods, controlling the laboratory rooms, controlling and regulating the local and primary airflow systems as well as providing comprehensive visualisation in the building automation and control system.

The laboratory control solution provides:

• Volume flow control of supply and exhaust air
• Monitoring of room air exchange – dual addition of up to 16 volume flow signals set point setting via LON bus, digital inputs, occupancy, or addition master/slave control of multiple volume flow controllers
• Monitoring of volume flows
• Alarm system via LON bus and relay
• Digital inputs for set point setting
• Emergency function
• Emergency operation
• Temperature control.

Primary plant controls included:

• 110 physical I/O’s
• 1 MCC Panel
• 1 AHU
• 11 Reheat Batteries
• 3 Extract Fans
• 1 Boiler and Pump Set.

There are 3 main lab areas, each with a suite of fume cupboards. Sirus supplied the fume cupboard controls which included:

• Sash controls
• Fume cupboard monitoring and control with high speed damper actuation
• VAV Controls – a mixture of VAV (Variable Air Volume) and CAV (Constant Air Volume) boxes serving the fume cupboards and rooms.

The Result

The solution was delivered inclusive of room supply and extract volume flow dampers with pre-mounted damper actuators and differential pressure sensors for volume flow measuring.

This provides access to the whole system (damper position, air volume, pressure, temperature etc. directly from the BMS).

It gives a central overview and alarms for room pressure and room pressure failure.

Whilst the ACT 101 Lab Solutions System represented the forefront of technology in 2011, improvements have been made to the system, and the next step is to update the Controllers to latest BACnet IP Controllers.

Due to the success of the above project, Sirus was engaged to commission two additional HVAC systems for other areas on the R&D Campus – one for a Lab in 2016 and the other for an Admin Office area which is currently in progress.