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Kaiser Permanente & Partners Healthcare, Displacement Ventilation Research
Mazzetti Nash Lipsey Burch (M+NLB) helped form the Healthcare Ventilation Research Collaborative (HVRC) in an effort to research alternative ventilation strategies for healthcare facilities. The initial component of this collaborative was to investigate the feasibility of using displacement ventilation for realizing energy savings with reduced airflow rates while maintaining patient, caretaker, and visitor safety with respect to infection control. With the funding of Kaiser Permanente and Partners Healthcare, M+NLB partnered up with Stantec to perform the investigation.
The research included a literature review, energy modeling, laboratory testing, numerical analysis using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and field mock-ups. The research concluded with the confirmation of the hypothesis displacement ventilation, ad reduced airflows, provided the opportunity for significant energy savings while maintaining patient comfort and safety. The results are being presented to the Facilities Guidelines Institute, the organization that develops guidelines for healthcare facilities, to amend the codes to allow for lower airflows and realize the energy savings.
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