Clean room technology is particularly energy-intensive. To create controlled environmental conditions such as particle concentration, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc., large quantities of air with high treatment quality are often required. The energy requirements of clean rooms are correspondingly high.
The energy requirements of clean room systems exceed those of residential and administrative buildings many times over. However, while regulations have been developed for residential and administrative buildings that enable standardized determination of energy requirements and proof of compliance with limit values, this is not possible for clean room systems. In production processes, the above-mentioned environmental conditions, which result from the specific process, primarily determine the energy requirement. These processes are usually complex and project-specific, so standardization (e.g. specifying benchmarks) is not possible.
Operators therefore face major challenges in view of climate change and the high expenditure on energy purchases.
Fortunately, there is a VDI guideline 2083 Sheet 4.2, which provides many practical recommendations for energy-efficient design and operation of clean rooms. The updated draft of VDI 2083-4.2 was approved by the VDI committee in November 2024 and will soon be published for comment.
Mr. Pfändler is part of the committee and uses practical examples to report on his experiences with energy-efficient design and energy efficiency optimization during ongoing operations. A systematic approach is also shown as to how to proceed with existing systems and new buildings in order to increase the savings potential. Savings of 20% to 40%, through operational and control measures alone, are common. Depending on the size of the system, cost savings in the high 5-digit range are possible per year. At the same time, a significant contribution is made to reducing CO2.