Ryton Gardens offers real life projects in a state of the art facility for organically-managed research, including glasshouses, poly-tunnels and cultivated land.
The shared usage means students of Coventry University gain hands on experience directly in the field of studies.
The Challenge
Providing design a integration of specialist M&E services for the application of organic research and development. The challenge laid out was gaining an understanding of the specialist equipment and an overview of its usage to enable complete facilitation of the necessary M&E connections, to ensure that the bridge between equipment specialists and contractor was fulfilled.
Given the inherent dangers of specialist equipment, particularly incorporation of medical gases, safety during use is paramount and the M&E solution needed to review this in depth to ensure occupational safety.
The Solution
Much involvement with the clients specialist team of researchers to understand the operational needs of the laboratory took place, collating the foundations of design.
Much of the equipment entailed servicing of medical gases, where careful consideration of location of generation/containment of the gases was reviewed along with routing. With risks of ignition and asphyxiation automated safety features were paramount.
Helium and Nitrogen was located external to the building in a purposefully integrated, grated and gated enclosure to maximise ventilation in event of spillage, maintaining segregation from unauthorised access. Hydrogen generation was site internally with gas lines routed in parallel to the Helium and Nitrogen.
Safety interlocks were design following calculation of gas expansion in event of spillage, with a need determined for oxygen detection sensors linking to a main panel, controlling solenoid shut off valves on the gas lines.
Safety was further mitigated with additional purpose designed ventilation, in accordance with the calculated gas expansion and rapid dilution required for prevention of asphyxiation.
A simplistic approach to climate comfort was recognised with DX cooling sized to the suit the beyond typical heat gains from specialist equipment and their processes.
Given the fine tolerance of equipment the electrical design reviewed EMF within the scope to ensure results of experiments are without flaw, and lighting levels suitable for the finer tasks requiring detailed viewing.
Although process heavy we reviewed electrical diversity diligently so not to oversize the incoming mains requirements known from the initial stage communication with end users.
