CPP Studies Exhaust System Effects for Massachusetts General Hospital’s Lunder Building
Founded in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital is the oldest hospital in the American New England states. When “Mass General” sought to add its new Lunder Building for advanced patient care, the design team knew that both hospital staff and the general public would need to safely use the newly constructed building and its surrounding areas. The team wanted to ensure that the new addition to its medical campus would neither create nor experience negative effects from building exhaust.
To analyze the effects of exhaust on the new building and surrounding areas, architectural firm NBBJ of New York hired exhaust dispersion specialists CPP. Our engineering team built a 1:240 scale model of the new building design and its urban surroundings. The team then used a boundary-layer wind tunnel to evaluate several different exhaust design configurations. These variations included two distinct roof configurations, different locations for exhaust systems, the effect of exhaust oxidizers, the height of stacks, and horizontally vs. vertically directed exhaust. CPP experts measured the contaminants and odor levels at the various nearby intake locations to measure what the effects would be on people working and convalescing in and around the new building.
CPP’s results and recommendations allowed NBBJ to better design this new building to protect the health and comfort of the building’s occupants. Several aspects of the design were found to need no changes. But for those locations that were at risk for contaminant and odor problems, CPP made design and mitigation recommendations that included exhaust oxidizers to reduce contaminants and odor from diesel emergency generators and identifying the better of two roof configurations. These changes would ensure safe, comfortable environment for the people using this new facility. Consulting with CPP allowed Mass General to neutralize problems before anyone was affected.
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