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News Release from: Acrilex | Subject: DuraGlow products
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 20 December 2007
DuraGlow photoluminescent perform
brilliantly
DuraGlow products are constructed from a material called Acriglo, photoluminescent acrylic sheets from Acrilex.
Inside the United Nations World Headquarters, which is 1.4 million square feet, there are underground hallways and corridors that seem to go on forever They extend for multiple city blocks, from 42nd to 47th street, and some measure 1,500 to 2,000 feet in length
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 10 Oct 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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There are 36 exit doors and stairwells that lead out of these underground passageways.
Imagine if the lights were to go out in these corridors: absolutely nothing would be visible.
That's exactly what happened during the New York City blackout in August 2003.
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To make matters worse, none of the back-up generators worked.
At the time of the incident, there were hundreds of people in the United Nations, many working below ground.
When the lights went out, they were essentially blind.
Luckily, all of these people managed to find their way out.
Even more amazing, about 200 of them, after getting out and finding they could not get home, returned back underground and were able to find their way through the corridors back to their offices and workshops, where they spent the night securely.
It was not flashlights that helped them find their way; flashlights at best create a short concentrated beam of light, but cannot delineate extended exit pathways.
The people in the United Nations building were assisted by a product called DuraGlow which provided non-electrical directional lighting to ensure that everyone could find their way out.
Manufactured by Suma Industries of New York, DuraGlow is used to create a wide assortment of photoluminescent glow-in-the-dark safety signs and pathway markings.
Whatever glowing signage is needed in an emergency environment, Suma makes it: emergency evacuation route maps and signs to mark exits, stairways, fire extinguishers, and emergency telephones.
In the case of the United Nations, pathway markers shaped as arrows and rectangles, both double-headed and single-headed, were placed just above the cove moldings bordering the corridor floors to guide building occupants to the exit doors and stairwells.
DuraGlow products are constructed from a material called Acriglo, photoluminescent acrylic sheets from New Jersey-based Acrilex , a leading producer and distributor of custom-colored acrylics and custom-configured acrylic fixtures.
The concept behind Acriglo is to provide illumination without backup power sources during a power outage, and to extend the period of illumination once battery backup fails.
Acrilex produces Acriglo by starting with its Acriglas acrylic sheets and imbuing them with a proprietary photoluminescent crystal, mixing it with the base acrylic monomer, and casting it in a specialized mold.
Unlike battery backup, or emergency generators, the glow in Acriglo is guaranteed to be present the instant the lights go out; there is no possibility of malfunction or improper charge, as ambient light supplies all the energy required during hours of normal building operation.
What's more, Acriglo is charged and discharged indefinitely without any degradation to the performance of the product.
Suma Industries purchases the Acriglo sheets and Acrilex manufactures the sheets according to Suma's specific DuraGlow formulation.
According to Bob Katz, executive vice president of Suma Industries, his company came across Acrilex through another Suma supplier - interestingly, a large manufacturer of lower-cost photoluminescent products.
"We told them we wanted an acrylic product, and they don't make one; so they referred us to Acrilex," he recalled.
"We've been working with Acrilex since the beginning of 2000 when the relevant fire safety codes were modified to allow for the installation of photoluminescent products".
Suma's desire to work with acrylic was based on the fact that acrylic offers significant advantages over other materials, particularly vinyl, a popular material commonly used for photoluminescent products.
"The primary problem with vinyl is that it tends to be soft and porous, which means it can be easily damaged," Katz said.
"And because vinyl is somewhat 'cloudy,' it doesn't glow as brightly or as long as acrylic.
"We actually started with vinyl, but because everyone was using vinyl, we felt it couldn't give us any competitive advantage.
"Acrylic is also a hard, high-impact, vandal-resistant product," he added.
"You can cut a groove in vinyl merely by running your nail across it.
That's not the case with Acrylic which features an exceptionally hard, smooth surface".
Once the decision to go with acrylic had been finalized, there were several other criteria that, according to Katz, had to be met.
"You want to make sure your product is using strontium oxide aluminate pigment exclusively which is essential to meet the standards for safety-grade materials," Katz explained.
"These pigments generate a brighter and longer glow than zinc sulfide, which has been around since the beginning of the 20th century, but is really not appropriate for glow-in-the-dark safety products".
"It's also critical to use a sufficient concentration of strontium oxide aluminate pigment in the product to insure adequate afterglow intensity and duration, many products utilize only topical applications," Katz said.
"Acriglo has strontium oxide aluminate distributed uniformly throughout its one-eighth inch thickness.
So even if you were to grind a sixteenth of an inch off the Acriglo surface, it would still glow".
Consistency of the crystal dispersion is another crucial production parameter.
"If you don't get uniform crystal dispersion throughout the sheet, you're going to have an uneven glow," said Katz.
"Due to its proprietary process, Acrilex is the only manufacturer working with these particular photoluminescent crystals that is capable of dispersing the crystals evenly through the sheets at the high concentration levels we require for DuraGlow".
Suma Industries purchases several hundred Acriglo sheets from Acrilex a year for their DuraGlow product.
The sheets are in squares measuring 48 inches by 48 inches, which are subsequently manufactured into the various DuraGlow end-user products.
"We're very efficient in the way we use the DuraGlow material," emphasized Katz.
"We use every piece of scrap".
The United Nations building is just one of the high-profile installations where DuraGlow is being utilized for emergency illumination.
Suma recently completed a project for GENCO, a leading third-party logistics solutions provider that constructs and manages enormous warehouses.
The recent Suma project was for a 1 million square foot warehouse with 59 cargo bays built for Johnson and Johnson in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.
"If the lights go out employees would be seriously lost," said Katz.
"In every one of the 59 cargo bays, there is a 'man' door; we've made map signs for each of those doors that tell you which phase you're in [the building has four phases] and how to find the nearest exit doors.
The firewalls in the warehouse also have man doors, and we put both signs and directional markings on those as well".
Interestingly, the quality of the DuraGlow sheets manufactured from Acriglo were judged so superior, it caused the United Nations to essentially "short-circuit" the bid process.
"The United Nations routinely performs technical evaluations before reviewing the bids," recalled Katz.
"Any product not performing up to the UN's technical standards is eliminated before the bids are opened.
"All of the competing products were placed in a dark room after being charged.
45 minutes later, UN management walked into the dark room and eliminated every product except DuraGlow based on the afterglow performance they witnessed.
The UN was so pleased with the DuraGlow performance that they concluded no further testing was required.
That's how much better the DuraGlow product was".
It was a brilliant performance by the DuraGlow acrylic sheets.
And as long as Suma Industries continues to use Acriglo to produce them, their performance will continue to shine.
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