IPAS has a rare combination of glass science, fibre fabrication, research facilities and expertise. Through the use of their new Preform and Draw Tower facilities designed by Lucid Consulting Engineers, the IPAS team has demonstrated its capacity to produce record breaking fibres, which have included the world's smallest core fibres, fibres with extreme nonlinearity, and the world's smallest hole in a fibre.
Preform Laboratory
The Preform laboratory consists of a complex array of specialist equipment including a glass production lathe, chemical deposition cabinet, walk-in fume cupboard which all require specialist building services solutions in order for the research team to work safely and efficiently.
Due to the CBD location of the Preform laboratory, the site does not lend itself to the storage of large quantities of gases as would normally be required for such a facility. As such, LCE designed and procured an array of on-site gas generation systems including:
- a 200 L/min hydrogen gas generator system
- a 140 L/min nitrogen gas generation system
- a 100 L/min oxygen gas generation system
Given the nature of the various chemicals and gases utilised within the Preform laboratory, numerous safety systems were risk analysed, designed and commissioned by LCE, including:
- double walled hydrogen gas pipework
- 2000 L/s chemical scrubber
- walk-in fume cupboard and associated wet scrubber systems
- custom built, lathe extraction system
- oxygen depletion sensing systems
- acid gas sensing systems
- positive pressurisation systems
- BMS safety systems including fire mode control of all systems
Draw Tower Facility
The 6m Draw Tower facility located at the Thebarton Campus of the University of Adelaide, provides IPAS with the ability to draw silica fibres in the temperature range of 1800 - 2200oC. Given the use of silica fibres as a medium, the facility was designed as a ISO Class 8 clean facility and incorporates the use of highly efficient air filtration systems and active positive pressure systems. Air conditioning was of upmost importance in the design since any undue air movement has the possibility of impairing an 8-hour fibre draw process.
A user-friendly BMS system controls all aspects of the installation and allows users fine-tune settings to best suit the type of work being undertaken within the laboratory.
A chilled water system was employed in the design to overcome the large amount of heat gain from the large electric furnace equipment used in drawing fibres. The use of the electric furnace required LCE to upgrade the existing electrical site infrastructure in the form of a new transformer to partly serve the entire Thebarton Campus.
This transformer upgrade was seamlessly undertaken by LCE engineers and all liaison with ETSA was well managed and resulted in the timely installation of the equipment without significant impact to other tenants on the Thebarton Campus. |
