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MAY 09 - PASSIVENT RACES WITH GREEN POWER



Leading natural ventilation and daylight solutions company Passivent is racing to meet the drive to promote eco-friendly solutions- literally!

Greenpower is a company supported by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, that aims at encouraging students aged between 9 and 21 to apply eco-friendly solutions to engineering and technology, primarily through the design, development and physical racing of electrically-powered cars. Passivent is not only working closely with Greenpower, but also St Pauls in Burgess Hill, West Sussex on the students’ cars, helping the children in the design and construction of the vehicles at the company’s Pinxton, Nottinghamshire factory, but also put together its own team for the 2009 Corporate Challenge.

The Season opener and Corporate Challenge was held at the historic Goodwood Motor Circuit, where the top 15 school cars from last year’s final raced against industry. The Passivent team out-performed even such established automotive marques as Prodrive and Jaguar LandRover! The Passivent sponsored cars of St Paul’s are now aiming to further improve their performance during the year’s regional heats to win a place at the national final in October.

Under the Greenpower scheme, pupils at secondary schools design, build and race their own car, using as a power source just one standard 24volt electric wheelchair motor and four 12volt car batteries (two on the car and two in reserve), then compete the car in a series of four-hour endurance races culminating in a national final held at the historic Goodwood Motor Circuit. The scheme can involve work in various subjects including Design & Technology, media (sponsorship and marketing of the car), textiles (team clothing), ICT (data logging, car electronics and monitoring of lap times) and Food Technology (feeding the crew!).

For St Pauls, Passivent has helped manufacture the car body panels using its advanced recycled ABS material and water based colouring technology used in its own range of Airstract and Airscoop ventilation roof terminals. It has also helped in the engineering of the aluminium box section frame chassis, showing the students how to TIG weld by applying in-house expertise from fabrication of Aircool louvres.

Neil Rideout, joint Managing Director at Passivent’s parent company the Building Product Design Group and whose son Matt and daughter Leonie are members of the St Paul’s Racers team, comments, “Greenpower and all that it stands for aligns very closely with Passivent’s own ethos of applying innovative engineering principles to develop solutions that reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. There is a natural synergy to work together, and encourage the youngsters of today, who will be the power behind industry tomorrow, to embrace the integration of eco-friendly solutions into engineering and manufacturing.”

Passivent natural ventilation systems for commercial buildings harness natural air movement principles to efficiently ventilate a building with little or no energy consumption. The systems are proven in real life to be one of the strategies to attain up to an A rating under the new Energy Performance Certificate. Passivent natural ventilation reduces energy consumption over air conditioned buildings by up to 50%, yields 15% savings on capital costs, 75% savings on maintenance costs, and eliminates the need for a separate plant room: in one installation* the Passivent system is being calculated at reducing energy demand by up to 80%! The strategy is further proven to reduce incidence of sick building syndrome, and improve student learning and staff performance.

A founder member of the NatVent EC-EU-funded project co-ordinated by the Building Research establishment to develop practical natural ventilation solutions for the commercial sector, Passivent has also contributed to the BISRIA Guide BG2/2005 Wind Driven Natural Ventilation Systems, as well as being a member of the DfES steering committee on natural ventilation guidance for schools, Building Bulletin 101. In addition to its natural and assisted ventilation systems and natural daylight systems, it supplies a comprehensive range of background trickle ventilators, through wall ventilators, and ‘whole house’ natural ventilation solutions, with or without acoustic options, all of which contribute towards efficient ventilation of the building with little or no energy consumption.

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