The Blue Grass heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC, start-up team completed systemization demonstration procedure testing for the Control and Support Building’s air-handling system in August.

“This system is important because it will maintain positive pressure, the pushing of clean air into the building, during agent operations,” said Dan DeKock, HVAC start-up supervisor, Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass. “Control Room operators will not have to put on masks in order to continue to safely operate the plant in the unlikely event of a chemical release outside the building.”

Testing the system took two days and proved the system functioned as designed, DeKock said. The first day involved running the system in automatic mode and making sure it maintained proper pressures. The second day included subjecting the equipment to failure simulations to ensure backups would respond as designed.

“The test was successful in part due to the combined 232 years of chemical demilitarization experience of the HVAC start-up team,” DeKock said. “The team is familiar with positive pressure and all the requirements, so it went smoothly.”

The next step is to turn the system over to operations.