<p dir="ltr">Great article. I know some people at ARA group and can try and organise a site visit if anyone is interested in coming along?</p>
<p dir="ltr">The hypoxic systems are designed to operate continuously to scrub oxygen from the air for the main reason that fresh air and other ingress air will always enter the room. The hypoxic system is henced sized to cater for the amount if fresh air that is anticipated. <br>
</p>
<p dir="ltr">Regards</p>
<p dir="ltr">Tony de Francesco<br>
Technical Director<br>
P.U.E. Pty Ltd<br>
Mob: +61 (0) 457 701 179<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:tonyd@pue.com.au">tonyd@pue.com.au</a></p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 13/01/2014 9:21 PM, "Matt Perkins" <<a href="mailto:matt@spectrum.com.au">matt@spectrum.com.au</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>These guys seem to have installed a
Hypoxic system recently. Would there environment be small enough
to meet the fresh air ingress requirements or would the system
just be running all the time in a battle between the fresh air and
putting converting it with nitrogen. <br>
<br>
<a href="http://aragroupblog.com.au/?p=2420" target="_blank">http://aragroupblog.com.au/?p=2420</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 13/01/14 8:54 PM, Tony de Francesco wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p dir="ltr">Just to clarify the australian BCA requirements: all
habitable spaces including machine rooms, switchrooms, etc. must
be provided with fresh outside air. The levels required are
stipulated in AS1668 but typically work out at around 1 l/s per
m2 for most data centre spaces. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Hospital operating theatres are actually provided
with 100% outside air via HEPA filtration with surrounding
service corridors kept at approx -ve 20Pa pressure to ensure
that no "dirty" air enters the theatre.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Even if it was not a BCA requirement there is a need
for fresh outside air in a data centre keep ot at a higher
pressure than surround areas to ensure that "dirty" air does not
enter the technical space.<br>
</p>
<p dir="ltr">Regards</p>
<p dir="ltr">Tony de Francesco<br>
Technical Director<br>
P.U.E. Pty Ltd<br>
Mob: <a href="tel:%2B61%20%280%29%20457%20701%20179" value="+61457701179" target="_blank">+61 (0) 457 701 179</a><br>
Email: <a href="mailto:tonyd@pue.com.au" target="_blank">tonyd@pue.com.au</a></p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 13/01/2014 8:13 PM, "Matt Perkins"
<<a href="mailto:matt@spectrum.com.au" target="_blank">matt@spectrum.com.au</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>That's good info Bevan, <br>
I wonder if the building code requires that fresh air be
injected into the entire building or all rooms within the
building. I wonder if Hypoxic fire prevention could be
employed in small computer room type environments or data
centers where division into smaller rooms or where
cold/hot aisle for example. I guess not useful
information for centers with large floor plates but may be
useful in power room environments or small server rooms
etc. If the building code allows. <br>
<br>
Operating theaters for example dont have fresh air
injected into them. It's a highly filtered air that's
injected from the outer rooms surrounding the theater
through HEPA and active charcoal. What counts as fresh
air. <br>
<br>
These guys make an interesting device. <a href="http://altitudetraining.com/prevenex/products/airunit" target="_blank">http://altitudetraining.com/prevenex/products/airunit</a><br>
<br>
Matt.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 13/01/14 7:07 PM, Bevan Slattery wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<span>
<div style="border-right:medium none;padding-right:0in;padding-left:0in;padding-top:3pt;text-align:left;font-size:11pt;border-bottom:medium none;font-family:Calibri;border-top:#b5c4df 1pt solid;padding-bottom:0in;border-left:medium none">
<span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span> Tony de
Francesco <<a href="mailto:tonyd@pue.com.au" target="_blank">tonyd@pue.com.au</a>><br>
</div>
<p dir="ltr">> Yes but Inergen is not used in large
DCs because of the volume required.</p>
</span>
<div>Simply not correct. Most large DC’s segregate spaces
to allow full discharge in a specific area.</div>
<span>
<p dir="ltr">> The European system is a hypoxic
system at low pressure. Very different to dumping a
whole bunch of gas through high pressure nozzles.</p>
</span>
<div>Challenge with this system in Australia (which I
looked at early in NEXTDC days) was that in Australia
you need to continually supply fresh air to a DC under
the building code. It is difficult to continually
deliver a hypoxic environment across a large facility
considering the Australian standards and the need to
continually extract O2/Inject N2 into the air supply.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hypoxic systems are typically used in things like
ship engine rooms to reduce the risk of catastrophic
fire or in environments with low traffic flow
(archives). In a colocation environment in Australia I
couldn’t get an insurer to get their head around having
staff and customers in a facility with a reduced O2, let
alone the technical issues around a requirement to
continually alter the air mix due to the building code.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So if you want to maintain a lower level of O2 you
had to operate the Agent Generator (essentially lower O2
in a bottle) 24/7 to maintain the O2 levels at the Fire
Type 2 levels. The amount of fresh air required in a
20,000m facility that had a volumetric size of 100
megalitres is “significant”. Very significant.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>All in all it wasn’t technically or commercially
viable for NEXTDC at the time to provide a continuous
hypoxic environment. This may have changed. There was
some investigation into using an agent generator to
create the refill in case of discharge removing the need
for a refill from alternate gas suppliers. But the
equipment needed to refill 20 megalitres (hall discharge
+1) was significant and the bottles required was
considerably greater from memory. Also not all gas
discharge systems are as high pressure these days so you
may want to check out the latest to ensure your points
are valid.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Cheers</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>[b]</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<span>
<p dir="ltr"><br>
</p>
<p dir="ltr"><br>
</p>
</span> <br>
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