Analysis of Blower Inside Biosafety Cabinet Class II A2 Using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Experimental Verifications
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UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK
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Centrifugal blowers are widely used in Heating, Ventilation, Air conditioning and Cooling (HVAC) industries. They operate constantly in long period and this will contribute to high electric power consumption. In a chemical and biological laboratory, there is common equipment called biological safety cabinet (BSC) which uses a centrifugal blower to maintain air circulation and provide protection to specimens and also to lab workers. Thus, high demand of energy-efficient BSC is a main challenge to manufacturers in developing biological safety cabinets with a high level of protection. Energy efficient equipment means an equipment producing the same results but with less energy. Therefore, this study is aims to increase the velocity of the air discharge from the centrifugal blower without using the surplus electricity. Previous studies have proven that air can naturally accelerated when passing through the pipeline that has an aerodynamic shape. Based on numerous findings, air flow on the surface which has an aerodynamic shape adapted from biomimetic showed significant improvements on air flow velocity and pattern. In this research, a novel duct with aerodynamic shape inspired bird Peregrine Falcon’s body has been developed. The duct consists of two parts; effective duct and accelerator duct. This duct is placed at the centrifugal blower’s outlet. The effect of air flow inside the pipe is analysed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Results of the simulations show that air was successfully accelerated after passing through the aerodynamic duct. Results of the experiment also proves that air velocity changed from 11.47 m/s after passing through the effective duct and successfully accelerated to 12.25 m/s with 8% increment after passing through the accelerator duct. Compared to without used aerodynamic duct the air flow velocity only 9.41 m/s. Another findings is non-uniform air flow discharge from centrifugal blowers have been successfully converted to uniform and it proved by smoke v pattern test. In addition, the vortex swirling strength is very low and does not adversely affect the air flow in BSC. As a conclusion, the results from CFD analysis agree with the experimental results. This research also proposes to use lower power centrifugal blower’s from 180 W to 145 W and it will save electricity consumption by 19% compared to the commercial configuration.