Mark
S.Bradley
Senior Application Specialist
CDIMS
Phone: (248) 344-7236
Fax: (248) 344-9401
E-mail: marketing@cdims.com
Web Site:
Biography:
Mark S. Bradley is a Senior Application Specialist for CDIMS; a Michigan-based provider of application-specific dry air solutions.
Mr. Bradley is a Michigan Tech alumnus and has specialized
in process dehumidification applications in
Synopsis:
Session F: “Its Raining In My Surgery”
Common engineering design standards for temperature and humidity levels in operating suites have not kept up with what surgeons now demand for comfort and procedure success. Legacy chilled water systems and even new hospitals are designed to these old standards. Typical “cool/re-heat” style systems are unable to achieve the recommended relative humidity levels even if they can achieve the lower temperatures now insisted upon by surgeons.
The result is an operating suite far outside the acceptable humidity range; increasing the risk for surgical site infections, causing fog on microscopes, impacting precision equipment and causing great discomfort for the surgical staff. Many hospitals even report dripping from supply ducts in the O.R’s.
The solution is to depress the relative humidity back into an acceptable range at these cooler temperatures. Conventional cool/re-heat technology becomes progressively more cumbersome as the space temperature requirements drop.
Where chilled water or refrigeration systems are naturally temperature-limited by the inevitable frozen coil, desiccant technology allows virtually unlimited humidity control levels. For surgical suites, this means that new surgeries can have total and independent control of both temperature and humidity. Also, most existing facilities can be easily accommodated to correct for lower temperature and humidity requirements.