UC Irvine Finkeldei Chemistry Lab Renovation
UC Irvine
Assistant Professor Sarah Finkeldei's research sits at the intersection of materials chemistry and nuclear chemistry, fabricating advanced nuclear fuel candidates and potential nuclear waste forms. The renovation of her laboratory and student office space across three levels of an existing science building had to accommodate a specialized inventory of equipment: furnaces, glove boxes, a scanning electron microscope, conventional fume hoods, and eight radioisotope hoods that presented a challenge the existing building infrastructure wasn't equipped to handle.
The building's lab exhaust system couldn't accommodate the added static pressure that radioisotope filtration requires. The solution was a fully independent exhaust system designed and installed exclusively for the radioisotope hoods. To ensure the new exhaust stack dispersed fumes safely, the team engaged a wind consultant to model the behavior of this new emission source relative to the surrounding campus environment.
