Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.0

Inquiry

Kitchen Exhaust System This project will include a cafeteria and kitchen designed to offer breakfast and lunch services to employees within the building. The kitchen will have an exhaust system with a capacity of 18,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM). The kitchen exhaust is made up of grease, cooling smoke, charcoal particulates, and odors. Standard practices compliant with the Building Code of the City of New York allow projects to vent commercial kitchen exhaust directly into the atmosphere. The design team for this project is proposing to clean the exhaust before venting it into the outside air. The primary means of cleaning the kitchen exhaust will be through an electrostatic precipitator and an absorber integrated with the air damper. The electrostatic precipitator is an air cleaner module that enables small particulate matter (particles from 10 to .01 microns) to be removed from the air stream with very little resistance to the airflow. Conventional air filters tend to experience a drop in air pressure and subsequently, a drop in fan energy efficiency due to resistance. In addition, filter trays of activated charcoal pellets effectively facilitate the absorption of other air contaminants including undesirable gases, vapors and odors. Furthermore, impingent, additional filtration media, and blower systems will remove contaminants from the kitchen exhaust as well. The design team would like the USGBC to recognize these measures with a LEED Innovation Credit as an example of a project that applied measures to clean air leaving the building when none were required by code. Will the measures that go well beyond the measures required by code and prevent the building\'s kitchen exhaust from being a contaminate source of the outside air quality qualify for a LEED V2.o Innovation Credit.