| Mr. Robert H. Morris Flow Safe, Inc. Robert Morris' high performance, low airflow, stable vortex fume hood is the first major advancement in fume hood technology in the last 50 years. It succeeded in solving the problems of high-energy consumption and poor containment found in conventional hoods. The stable hood challenged the widely held concept that 100 FPM fume hood face velocity was required to make a fume hood safe. Morris' company, Flow Safe, a small company with limited resources, was faced with creating a worldwide paradigm shift in a mature industry, which was initially unwilling to accept new concepts. But today, the stable vortex fume hood is widely accepted and acknowledged as the safest and most energy efficient fume hood in the industry. Government studies indicates that if only half of the existing fume hoods were replaced with high performance, low airflow fume hoods, our nation would save 235 trillion BTU's of energy per year. This is equivalent to the energy used by 6.2 million U.S. households. Also, for every unit of energy saved, the unit of pollution that would be producing this energy is also saved. To give an example of the potential financial benefits, the Elizabeth Water Company in Bridgewater, NJ, recently replaced 10 conventional hoods with 10 high performance, low air flow stable vortex fume hoods. The company received $112,000 back from the New Jersey's Smart Energy Program, which is more money than they spent for the new fume hoods. Robert Morris' desire to design a safer, more efficient fume hood grew out of his interest in solving indoor air quality issues. He has been designing "Green Laboratories" since before it was popular and donated his time to teach other engineers how to build technology that will help sustain, and not harm, the environment. |
