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Annals of Occupational Hygiene Advance Access originally published online on April 27, 2009
Annals of Occupational Hygiene 2009 53(4):425-440; doi:10.1093/annhyg/mep020
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Occupational Hygiene Society

Flow and Performance of an Air-curtain Biological Safety Cabinet

Rong Fung Huang* and Chun I. Chou

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43 Keelung Road, Section 4, Taipei, Taiwan, People's Republic of China

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +886-2-2737-6488; fax: +886-2-2737-6460; e-mail: rfhuang{at}mail.ntust.edu.tw

Using laser-assisted smoke flow visualization and tracer gas concentration detection techniques, this study examines aerodynamic flow properties and the characteristics of escape from containment, inward dispersion, and cross-cabinet contamination of a biological safety cabinet installed with an air curtain across the front aperture. The experimental method partially simulates the NSF/ANSI 49 standards with the difference that the biological tracer recommended by these standards is replaced by a mixture of 10% SF6 in N2. The air curtain is set up across the cabinet aperture plane by means of a narrow planar jet issued from the lower edge of the sash and a suction flow going through a suction slot installed at the front edge of the work surface. Varying the combination of jet velocity, suction flow velocity, and descending flow velocity reveals three types of characteristic flow modes: ‘straight curtain’, ‘slightly concave curtain’, and ‘severely concave curtain’. Operating the cabinet in the straight curtain mode causes the air curtain to impinge on the doorsill and therefore induces serious escape from containment. In the severely concave curtain mode, drastically large inward dispersion and cross-cabinet contamination were observed because environmental air entered into the cabinet and a three-dimensional vortical flow structure formed in the cabinet. The slightly concave curtain mode presents a smooth and two-dimensional flow pattern with an air curtain separating the outside atmosphere from the inside space of the cabinet, and therefore exhibited negligibly small escape from containment, inward dispersion, and cross-cabinet contamination.

Keywords: aerodynamic characteristics • air-curtain cabinet • biological safety cabinet • microbiological safety cabinet • performance evaluation

Received October 30, 2008; in final form February 19, 2009


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