CIAT provides the air handling for the new Louvre-Lens museum

More than 60 CIAT air handling units have been installed at the recently opened Louvre-Lens museum in northern France to filter the air and maintain humidity and temperature at optimum levels in the museum's galleries, storage rooms and restoration workshops.

An annex of the Louvre museum in Paris, the Louvre-Lens museum is an autonomous institution linked to the original Louvre by a scientific and cultural convention. Built on the site of a disused coalmine, the new museum houses semi-permanent exhibitions that are sourced from the Louvre's collections of works and changed on a regular basis. It also hosts temporary exhibitions.

Stretching across 20 hectares of landscaped grounds, the Louvre-Lens museum has a total surface area of 28,000 m2 that includes 7,000 m2 of exhibition galleries and storerooms open to the public (between 600 and 800 major artworks loaned by the Louvre in Paris are distributed among a 3,000 m2 main gallery known as the 'Gallery of Time', a 1,800 m2 temporary exhibition gallery and a 1,000 m2 glass pavilion) and 1,000 m2 of storage for the museum's collections. The museum's five interconnected main buildings (a cube, an entrance hall and four box-shaped buildings with flat roofs and slightly curved glass walls that follow the land's natural contours) are long and relatively low (measuring 6-7 metres in height) and clad in laminated frosted glass and aluminium panels to reflect the surrounding light.



To ensure their collections are well preserved, museums must maintain temperatures and humidity at very precise levels. The specifications for the Louvre-Lens museum stipulated a maximum allowable fluctuation of 1°C and 5% relative humidity. A maximum temperature stratification of 0.5°C per metre is tolerated in order to protect large works from damage. The museum's large indoor spaces make meeting these specifications particularly tricky. For example, its largest gallery measures 3,000 m2 and has a ceiling height of 6 m representing a volume of almost 20,000 m3. Six air handling units with air flow rates of 25,000 m3/h were thus installed to handle the room's requirements. AHUs with air flow rates of 25,000 m3/h were also installed in the temporary exhibition rooms and two 20,000 m3/h AHUs were installed in the glass pavilion. Each room in which works may be exhibited is also equipped with its own air handling unit in order to meet the same temperature and humidity requirements.



"The challenge here was that we needed someone who could help us adapt the AHUs to the limited space available in the mechanical rooms whilst keeping within a tight budget. With CIAT's help, we worked hard on optimising the AHUs. We particularly appreciated the technical support provided by its teams. For example, we eliminated the air recovery sections and mixing boxes on the 25,000 m3/h units in the exhibition galleries and optimised the control of fresh air and discharge air thanks to variable flow boxes. As a result, the units are much shorter. CIAT also fitted the high-pressure humidification racks in the factory and provided technical support on the disassembly and reassembly of several AHUs on the site," says Pascal Quintin, Project Leader with Eiffage Thermie.

More than 60 Climaciat Airtech AHUs were delivered. Of these, 16 are single-flow units with two-way mixing boxes, 22 are dual-flow units with three-way mixing boxes, seven are dual-flow units with plate heat exchangers (for recovering a portion of heat energy from exhaust air and using it to warm incoming air) and two are dual-flow units with water heat-recovery coils.


After the system was completed in August 2012, it was tested with the Louvre's experts over a period of several months in order to verify the proper stability of the humidity and temperature curves.

CIAT also delivered 40 Major Line fan coil comfort units, 37 Melody cassette units, 78 Coadis 2 Coanda effect cassette units and 17 Héliotherme 4000 air heaters for the museum's offices and areas in which artwork is not exhibited.

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