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Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington

The Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory campus has undergone a major expansion, including a new 150,000 ft², two-storey Biological and Computational Science Facility. This has two distinct wings with very different heating and ventilation requirements.

Location

  • Richland, Washington, US

Client

  • PNNL

Architect

Project Status

  • Completed in 2010

The first wing, the Biological Science Facility (BSF), houses both wet and dry laboratories including nuclear magnetic resonance testing rooms, while the Computational Science Facility (CSF) accommodates high-performance computing, cyber security and information analytics research, and electronic and instrumentation labs.

With such a large amount of electrical equipment, the CSF requires significant cooling throughout the year, while the BSF needs 24/7 seasonal heating and cooling.

img-Lighting-design-for-battelle-pacific-Northwest-National-Laboratory

LEED Gold Certified Laboratory

WSP’s solution was to use the stable low temperature of groundwater to inexpensively cool the CSF all year round and the BSF in summer, with four wells adjacent to the Columbia River. Meanwhile, during the winter months, excess heat from the CSF is recovered and used to heat the BSF, providing both facilities with efficient and cost-effective heating and ventilation systems that have reduced the building’s energy use by about a third.

WSP's lighting design is also exceptionally energy-efficient, incorporating occupancy sensors and fixtures that beat conventional standards by 35% without compromising on light levels or aesthetics. Overall, the lighting's energy use throughout the building is just 0.84W/ft² . The energy-efficient heating and ventilation and lighting design has also created savings of $150,000 per year. Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is now one of the first 10 LEED Gold laboratories in the country.

Other challenges that we have overcome