Effect of furniture presence on optimum relative location of inlet and exhaust and on indoor air contaminant concentration

Details

• Personal Author:
  Ahmed M ; Feigley C ; Khan J ; Lee E ; Tamanna S
• Description:
  The relative location of air inlets and exhausts ventilation ports, presence and locations of heat and contaminant producing sources, and the presence of flow obstructing furniture are some of the important factors which affect the distribution of contaminant concentration in a workroom. This paper presents an extension of our previous work where several different inlet and exhaust locations without furniture presence were investigated. In this paper we have attempted to determine if the presence of furniture and heat-producing sources affect the optimum inlet and exhaust locations which was previously studied without the presence of furniture. Room concentration patterns for a workroom were explored by computational fluid dynamics simulations for various inlet locations, exhaust locations, with furniture and dilution air flow rates. Thermal effect for worker presence, computers, and lights on were also investigated. Average contaminant concentrations were calculated for the entire room, the breathing zone plane, and the near-source breathing zone. It was found that the presence of furniture does not affect the optimum location of inlets and exhausts provided the furniture does not directly obstruct the exhausts. For wall jet inlets when the exits are on the right or left sidewalls, contaminant concentration is affected by the presence of furniture. This is because the incoming jet is diverted by the furniture. When the inlets are on the sidewalls, presence of furniture results in higher contaminant concentration but the reverse is true for ceiling inlets. Light sources present in the ceiling appear to have less effect on the concentration, because the buoyant plumes created by the light tend to not affect the rest of the flow, whereas the presence of computers on a desk did affect the concentration if the buoyancy-driven flow changed the overall flow pattern. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Movements Air Pollutants, Occupational Air Pollution Air Pollution, Indoor Environmental Monitoring Hot Temperature Occupational Health Safety Temperature Ventilation Workplace

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• Keywords:
  Air-contamination Air-flow Air-quality Air-sampling Breathing-zone Exhaust-ventilation Exposure-levels Heat Sampling Temperature-effects Work-environment Workers

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• Publisher:
  American Industrial Hygiene Association
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 4 ; South Carolina
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  50
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20045433
• Citation:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 8-13, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia. Fairfax, VA: American Industrial Hygiene Association, 2004 May; :50
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2004
• Performing Organization:
  University of South Carolina at Columbia, Columbia, South Carolina
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20010901
• Source Full Name:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 8-13, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia
• End Date:
  20050831
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ec9739278f9b91653d3873bfeb3698482e71510e445583a5bb7c65f9f0232751e36271a21ad0c227cbd9de2c4a205254457edfdd536aa4f240fab8f7318de959
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/200854/cdc_200854_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.39 MB ]