University of Waterloo Photovoltaic Laboratory
Working together with the Director of Nanotechnology and scientists from ATS Spheral Solar, TWFP's architects and engineers designed University of Waterloo (UW)'s new 45,000 sq.ft., three-storey photovoltaic lab facility, which facilitates research on and advancements in practical PV solar cell technology. Beyond UW, participants included the universities of Toronto, York, Western, and Saskatchewan, as well as Natural Resources Canada and other agencies. Our design accommodates experimentation equipment in a chemistry lab, clean room labs, characterization lab and pilot plant facility. Mechanically, we designed the general clean room to Class 10,000 standards, and a light-sensitive semi-conductor clean room to Class 1,000 standards.
To accommodate the facility's activities, we designed specialized process services, including exhaust systems, process fluid distribution and circulation systems.
We met the specialized exhaust requirements through CPVC acid-resistant exhaust ducting, stainless steel thermal exhaust ducting, and toxic gas neutralization equipment.
Process fluids include a deionized (DI) water plant, which includes reverse osmosis (RO) water treatment, a special isolated process cooling water circulating system, and various process gas distribution equipment. The labs have dry compressed air, nitrogen and vacuum systems.
We provided a gas cylinder room to serve the storage, handling and distribution of special process gases. There is also a gas monitoring, detection and alarm system integrated with the Building Automation System (BAS) and mechanical systems to respond to gas leaks.
The second and third floors of the lab will be unoccupied for future programming.
