VITO Climate chamber

Customer request

As part of a European research project, VITO wanted to set up a mobile climate chamber to treat materials, more precisely to conduct tests on sustainable building materials.

In the climate room, temperature and humidity must be precisely controllable and variable over time according to arbitrarily chosen recipes. Treatments can be thermal, for example to initiate chemical reactions, or drying cycles.

The installation had to be fully integrated and easily transportable to enable on-site testing and development of recipes. The noise level at a distance of 1 m should not exceed 45 dB (A).

Approach

The climate chamber was built entirely in a sea container of 6 m x 2.4 m x 2.4 m. The container space is divided into 2 independent climate rooms, each with their own conditioning system consisting of heating, humidification and control valves. The technical room contains the electrical installation and control, a heat pump to condition the intake air and a 1m³ water tank for the humidification system.   Each drying chamber has a maximum test capactity of 1 ton, which is quite extensive compared to most test environments.

Sound attenuators were fitted on both the air inlet and outlet of the room to reduce noise levels.

The frequency controlled fans, the high pressure pumps and nebulizers as well as the electrical resistances are all controlled via the PLC so that the desired climate can be created for the treatment procedure.

The various parameters are registered, trendings are displayed on the control screen and data exchange can be established via the own network and 4G. Different recipes can be progammed or loaded with the desired parameters (temperature, moisture, air speed) depending on the time.