Newmatic Engineering is an application engineering firm providing products and services to support the design, deployment, and maintenance of building systems (mechanical, electrical, and high-tech systems) within the commercial and industrial building industry. Our current area of involvement is laboratory design, specializing in chemistry research laboratories for both pharmaceutical and institutional clients. We focus our engineering programs and systems on optimizing energy efficiency and maximizing safety in critical environments. Laboratory buildings generally have the highest energy density per square footage of any type of commercial building and our programs have resulted in dramatic energy savings in these types of facilities.

Our core business centers on optimizing energy efficiency in laboratories and research facilities through engineering, retro-commissioning, and re-commissioning programs, and lab controls retrofits from constant volume to more energy efficient variable volume laboratory airflow controls systems.

LABORATORIES AND ENERGY USAGE

Laboratory facilities are typically the number one consumer of energy of any type of building because of two key factors:

1. They require 100% single-pass outside air for ventilation, thus the supply air in laboratories and critical environments cannot be re-circulated.
2. They have high air change rates, especially in the absence of monitoring equipment.

Single pass ventilation air is very costly to produce. Supply fan power is required to generate and produce the air, then the air must be conditioned (heated/cooled), filtered and transported, and finally exhausted (completely, with no return). There are many mechanical systems providing controls of laboratories, however a thorough understanding of application, engineering principles, equipment, systems and owner requirements is needed to provide energy efficient operations.

WHAT WE DO

Newmatic Engineering has developed the only comprehensive laboratory and fume hood controls re-commissioning program in the industry. Our engineering group developed the Laboratory & Fume Hood Controls Re-Commission & Performance Optimization™ (Lab-RCX™) Program in response to overwhelming evidence that re-commissioning aging mechanical and control systems restores optimal performance.

As mentioned, labs cost a lot of money to operate. Most labs are designed to exchange supply air 10 to 12 (sometimes more) times per hour. Lab control systems, like most systems, are subject to performance degradation. This is documented in the well known Continuous Commissioning® study conducted at Texas A&M University. The study revealed that, on average, buildings drift from optimal performance ≈12% every 2 years.

Lab-RCx addresses energy waste in labs by assessing system operational status, repairing and replacing failed sensors and controls, and rebalancing the air handling system to eliminate excess ventilation.