[Tracer gas evaluations of local exhaust hood performance]

A local exhaust hood is one of the most commonly used controls for harmful contaminants in the working environment. In Japan, the performance of a hood is evaluated by hood velocity measurements, and administrative performance requirements for hoods are provided as control velocities by the Japanese Industrial Safety and Health Law. However, it is doubtful whether the control velocity would be the most suitable velocity for any industrial hood since the control velocity is not substantiated by actual measurements of the containment ability of each hood. In order to examine the suitability of the control velocity as a performance requirement, a hood performance test by the tracer gas method, using carbon dioxide (CO(2)), was conducted with an exterior type hood in a laboratory. In this study, as an index of the hood performance, capture efficiency defined as the ratio of contaminant quantity captured by the hood to the total generated contaminant quantity, was determined by measuring the CO(2) concentrations. When the assumptive capture point of the contaminant was located at a point 30 cm from the hood opening, a capture efficiency of >90% could be achieved with a suction velocity of less than the current control velocity. Without cross draft, a capture efficiency of >90% could be achieved with a suction velocity of 0.2 m/s (corresponding to 40% of the control velocity) at the capture point. Reduction of the suction velocity to 0.2 m/s caused an 80% decrease in exhaust flow rate. The effect of cross draft, set at 0.3 m/s, on the capture efficiency differed according to its direction. When the direction of the cross draft was normal to the hood centerline, the effect was not recognized and a capture efficiency of >90% could be achieved with a suction velocity of 0.2 m/s. A cross draft from a worker's back (at an angle of 45 degrees to the hood centerline) did not affect the capture efficiency, either. When the cross draft blew at an angle of 135 degrees to the hood centerline, a capture efficiency of >90% could be achieved with a suction velocity of 0.4 m/s. The reduction of suction velocity would beneficially reduce running costs of local exhaust hoods and air conditioning. Effective and economical exhaustion would be achieved if the minimum velocity obtained by the tracer gas method were to be substituted for the excessive control velocity.