Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

University Restores HVAC System Performance

  • 03/01/18
HVAC

The University of Arkansas achieved better IAQ and less energy consumption in their buildings with the help of UV-C from UV Resources.

When your campus is home to 27,000 students, indoor air quality (IAQ) is of utmost importance. Located in Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas has 100 buildings served by approximately 150 air handling units (AHUs), each designed to condition and filter campus airstreams.

Rick Gragg, HVAC coordinator with the university’s Utility Operations Facility Operation department, has supervised a decade-long mission to improve IAQ by retrofitting campus AHUs with ultraviolet germicidal irradiation. The technology uses light in the ultraviolet-C (UV-C) spectrum to remove biological growth from HVAC/R equipment, ensuring safe and clean air for students and faculty.

Gragg’s experience with UV-C began in 2008, when facilities personnel alerted him to complaints about biological growth accumulation on the air distribution registers in the Health, Physical Education and Recreation Building.

Using this as a test case for UV-C, Gragg had his contractor retrofit the lights on two air handlers downstream of the coil that service the building. He chose the RLM Xtreme fixtureless UV-C lamp system, manufactured by Santa-Clarita, California-based UV Resources.

Over a three-month period of UV-C treatment, measurements revealed a coil pressure drop decrease from nearly 1.0 inch to less than 0.8-inch of static pressure. This 2/10th of an inch reduction meant that the AHU fan didn’t need to strain to draw air through the plenum, providing energy savings and disinfection.

“Once the coil was cleaned and returned to its original ‘as-built’ specification, the system did not need to consume as much energy. As a result, we could lower the brake horse power by 1.311 and save roughly $1,077 in annual energy costs,” reports Gragg.

Convinced of UV-C’s effectiveness, the university has continued to install the units ever since—48 to date—across campus as standard practice. The most recent application involved installing the technology in two air handling units in February 2018.

www.uvresources.com

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management March 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Auburn University Debuts $224M STEM + Agricultural Sciences Complex

    Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., recently opened its new $224-million STEM + Agricultural Sciences Complex, the largest research construction project in the university’s history, according to university news. The facility measures more than 265,000 square feet and brings six departments from the College of Agriculture and College of Sciences and Mathematics together under one roof.

  • Phoenix High School Completes First Phase of Campus Renovations

    Metro Tech High School, part of the Phoenix Union High School District (PXU) in Phoenix, Ariz., recently announced the completion of the first stage of a campus renovation project, according to a news release. The school reopened a series of public-facing business operations spaces including credit union, daycare, floral, cosmetology, and culinary services. It also includes new CTE learning spaces for the school’s nursing assistant, pharmacy, and sports medicine programs.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • University of Kentucky Reopens Scovell Hall

    The University of Kentucky recently reopened Scovell Hall, part of the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CAFE), following comprehensive renovations to the 120-year-old facility in Lexington, Ky., according to a news release.