Engineering a Laboratory for the Next 50 Years
EDITOR’ S CHOICE A LANDMARK LAB UPGRADE
AXAIR FANS
Engineering a Laboratory for the Next 50 Years
How early technical collaboration with Axair Fans shaped the fume extraction strategy for one of the UK’ s most significant laboratory redevelopments.
This impressive laboratory project began with a Grade II listed building. Originally designed by Sir Denys Lasdun and completed between 1968 and 1970, the Lasdun Wall landmark complex has stood at the heart of the Norwich campus at the University of East Anglia, for more than half a century. Its distinctive architecture defined a generation of university design, but like many buildings of its era, it’ s reached the point where significant investment is needed to meet the demands of modern research.
The redevelopment of Building 3 at the UEA’ s Lasdun Wall is transforming one of Britain’ s most recognisable post-war university structures into a future-ready science and teaching facility, and Axair are delighted to be chosen to be a part of its future.
The redevelopment goes well beyond refurbishment. It combines sensitive conservation of a significant building with the creation of contemporary laboratory space to support worldclass research for decades to come. Alongside improvements to the building and energy performance, the project introduces scientific teaching spaces built to today’ s laboratory standards.
Modern laboratories depend on environmental control systems capable of maintaining safe working conditions while operating efficiently, reliably and continuously, and among the most critical of these is laboratory fume extraction.
Laboratory extract systems differ fundamentally from conventional building ventilation. Rather than simply moving air from one place to another, they must safely remove hazardous and often corrosive contaminants while maintaining precise airflow conditions across multiple lab spaces. The consequences of poor performance extend well beyond energy efficiency, they affect containment, safety and operational resilience directly.
The project’ s laboratory extract package was arranged across three independent systems, each built around a duty-dutyduty configuration rather than a conventional duty / standby arrangement. All fans within a system operate simultaneously, sharing the load, should one become unavailable, the remaining units automatically increase output to maintain negative pressure within the shared extract header. For research laboratories, this resilience matters enormously, ventilation cannot simply stop because a single fan develops a fault.
Rather than selecting equipment against a fixed set of numbers, Axair’ s applications engineers worked to understand how each extract system would need to behave across its full operating range, not just at a single design point, but throughout the variable conditions a live laboratory produces.
That approach led to the selection of fans from Axair’ s MBPN polypropylene centrifugal range. Corrosion-resistant, backwardcurved impeller units purpose-built for aggressive laboratory exhaust streams and chemical processing environments, and fully compatible with variable-speed control.
“ The motors can all be driven in excess of synchronous speeds. Sixty hertz would be standard and absolutely no issue,” explains Andrew Jones, Technical Director at Axair Fans. That extended frequency range gave the project valuable operating flexibility, allowing the same fan platform to be applied consistently across all three laboratory zones rather than requiring multiple bespoke product lines.
Before leaving Axair’ s facility, every fan supplied for the project would undergo operational running and speed verification, confirming rotational speed, performance and build quality ahead of dispatch, an additional layer of assurance for equipment forming part of a critical life-safety system.
Projects like Lasdun Wall demonstrate that fan selection is rarely just that. Laboratory ventilation is an integrated engineering discipline, where airflow, pressure, controls and system behaviour all shape the outcome. Early manufacturer involvement, before equipment is ordered rather than after, allows the operating philosophy of a system to be properly understood and validated, rather than assumed.
For a building with fifty years of history behind it, and decades of research ahead, that distinction matters.
For further information, please visit www. axair-fans. co. uk
24 PECM Issue 83