Influence of Ventilation on Indoor Air Quality

Abstract

Ventilation is to provide unconditioned outdoor air or conditioned, combined, outdoor, and recirculated air for suitable indoor comfort and acceptable air quality. Ventilation can be categorized into natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation, and their hybrid form. Due to the pros and cons of each ventilation mode, a ventilation mode may suit to a pertinent indoor space in a specific climate region or location. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impacts of ventilation modes on indoor air quality in different indoor spaces, such as residential buildings, office buildings, and transportation vehicle cabins with the dense commercial aircraft cabin as an example. The evaluated ventilation modes include natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation, and the occasional hybrid ventilation. The mechanical ventilation is further divided into mixing ventilation, displacement ventilation, stratum ventilation, and personalized ventilation in an office building or aircraft cabin. Ventilation of residential buildings in the situation with outdoor PM2.5 pollution has been systematically addressed. The indoor air quality performance in terms of ventilation rate, concentrations of CO2, formaldehyde, TVOC, and PM2.5 was evaluated. In addition to indoor air quality, the possible airborne infection transmission, thermal comfort, energy consumption, and affordability of each ventilation mode have also been examined.KeywordsNatural ventilationMechanical ventilationResidential buildingOffice buildingTransportation vehicle cabin