An indoor air aerosol model for outdoor contaminant transmission into occupied rooms

The paper presents a simple model for outdoor air contaminant transmission into occupied rooms. In the model, several factors such as filtration, ventilation, deposition, re-emission, outdoor concentration and indoor sources are included. The model results show that the air exchange rate plays an important role in the transmission of outdoor contaminants into the indoor environment. The model shows that increasing the value of the filtration efficiency decreases the mass concentration of indoor particles. In addition, if outdoor aerosol particles have a periodic behaviour, indoor aerosol particles also behave periodically but smoother. Indoor sources are found to be able to increase indoor concentrations greatly and continuously.

CO and Particle Pollution of Indoor Air in Beijing and Its Elemental Analysis

Three representative types of houses in Beijing were selected and, in each type, smoking and nonsmoking households were compared. IP, RP. and CO concentrations in the living room and kitchen were monitored during each season. and the level of COHb in the heads of the households were measured. The study showed that indoor air pollution was rather severe, especially during winter. when paniculate concentrations markedly exceeded the standard and CO concentration was as high as 47 ppm. Indoor air pollution was closely related to the type of house, particularly to the mode of heating. In houses. of the same type, pollution improved greatly after central heating facilities were installed. Analysis of 30 elements revealed that pollution was typically caused by coal burning. aggravated by dusty wind, but high indoor Pb levels were probably due to the use of LPG for cooking. In our study the effect of cigarette smoking was sometimes masked by the severe indoor pollution. (C)1990 Academic Press, Inc.

Predicting indoor particle dispersion under dynamic ventilation modes with high-order Markov chain model

Mechanical and natural ventilations are effective measures to remove indoor airborne contaminants,thereby creating improved indoor air quality(IAQ).Among various simulation techniques,Markov chain model is a relatively new and efficient method in predicting indoor airborne pollutants.The existing Markov chain model(for indoor airborne pollutants)is basically assumed as first-order,which however is difficult to deal with airborne particles with non-negligible inertial.In this study,a novel weight-factor-based high-order(second-order and third-order)Markov chain model is developed to simulate particle dispersion and deposition indoors under fixed and dynamic ventilation modes.Flow fields under various ventilation modes are solved by computational fluid dynamics(CFD)tools in advance,and then the basic first-order Markov chain model is implemented and validated by both simulation results and experimental data from literature.Furthermore,different groups of weight factors are tested to estimate appropriate weight factors for both second-order and third-order Markov chain models.Finally,the calculation process is properly designed and controlled,so that the proposed high-order(second-order)Markov chain model can be used to perform particle-phase simulation under consecutively changed ventilation modes.Results indicate that the proposed second-order model does well in predicting particle dispersion and deposition under fixed ventilation mode as well as consecutively changed ventilation modes.Compared with traditional first-order Markov chain model,the proposed high-order model performs with more reasonable accuracy but without significant computing cost increment.The most suitable weight factors of the simulation case in this study are found to be(λ_(1)=0.7,λ_(2)=0.3,λ_(3)=0)for second-order Markov chain model,and(λ_(1)=0.8,λ_(2)=0.1,λ_(3)=0.1)for third-order Markov chain model in terms of reducing errors in particle deposition and escape prediction.With the improvements of the efficiency of state transfer matrix construction and flow field data acquisition/processing,the proposed high-order Markov chain model is expected to provide an alternative choice for fast prediction of indoor airborne particulate(as well as gaseous)pollutants under transient flows.

Six-day measurement of size-resolved indoor fluorescent bioaerosols of outdoor origin in an office

Indoor airborne bioaerosols of outdoor origin play an important role in determining the exposure of humans to bioaerosols because people spend most of their time indoors. However, there are few studies focusing on indoor bioaerosols originating from outdoors. In this study, indoor versus outdoor size-resolved concentrations and particle asymmetry factors of airborne fluorescent bioaerosols in an office room were measured continuously for 6 days （144 h） using a fluorescent bioaerosol detector. The windows and door of this room were closed to ensure that there was only air infiltration; moreover, any human activities were ceased during sampling to inhibit effects of indoor sources. We focused on fine particles, since few coarse particles enter indoor environments, when windows and doors are closed. Both indoor and outdoor fluorescent bioaerosol size distributions were fit with two-mode lognormal distributions （indoor R2 = 0.935, outdoor R2 = 0.938）. Asymmetry factor distributions were also fit with lognormal distributions （indoor R2 = 0.992, outdoor R2 = 0.992）. Correlations between indoor and outdoor fluorescent bioaerosol concentrations show significant concentration-attenuation and a time lag during the study period. A two-parameter, semi-empirical model was used to predict concentrations of indoor fluorescent bioaerosols of outdoor origin. The measured and predicted concentrations had a linear relationship for the studied size fractions, with an R2 for all size fractions of larger than 0.83.

Indoor and outdoor particle concentration distributions of a typical meeting room during haze and clear-sky days

Air quality has increasingly been a great concern all over the world,and the good command of indoor and outdoor air qualities is of