Clean Rooms and Energy Savings

Users of cleanrooms and related environments have always been major consumers of energy. Many sectors and activities are concerned: health, research, pharmaceuticals, micromechanics, electronics, agri-food...

Recent trends in energy prices have increased cleanroom operating costs tenfold. This situation has reinforced the need to find appropriate technical solutions to keep budgets under control, and to combine this with a global approach to costs. This is also in line with the policy of respecting CSR rules, which are increasingly present in everyday life and in companies.

In the world of cleanrooms, it is possible, while continuing to control contamination, the main virtue of this type of facility, to successfully embark on an approach to optimize energy expenditure, both for existing and new facilities, by integrating energy aspects right from the design stage, enabling the associated consumption to be reduced and anticipated.

There are many ways to think about this, for example the need to insulate ducts properly to prevent heat loss, the sizing of filtration devices and surfaces, and air ducts to minimize pressure drops, the installation of automatic or manual standby systems enabling the air handling system to operate in reduced mode when clean rooms are not in use, or during production stoppages, in order to treat a smaller quantity of air, control of room leaks, recycling of air and/or calories and frigories... Substantial energy savings can thus be achieved.

ASPEC (Association pour la prévention et l'étude des contaminations) is a non-profit organization that has been working in the field of contamination control and cleanrooms for over 50 years.

One of the company's missions is to focus on the issue of energy performance, in order to understand the stakes, assess the current situation and, above all, propose existing solutions and share them through case studies and feedback.

To this end, as early as 2016, ASPEC collaborated with Ademe and EDF to set up working groups that have enabled progress to be made on the subject, notably through feedback from the field, and through the distribution of a technical guide, articles and publications, through conferences and workshops presented at conferences and technical days.

This article, based on these experiences, presents the steps and actions to be taken to improve the energy performance of a cleanroom installation.