Inverse identification of gaseous pollutant sources in a mixed ventilation room with downwind scheme-based backward modeling

Abstract

Inverse computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling is an effective method to track indoor Pollutant sources. In this paper, heat transfer and instantaneous diffusion of contaminants in the mixed ventilation room have been investigated numerically. On the basis of the numerical simulation of indoor air flows, the reverse time modeling of diffusion-convection contaminant dispersions has been developed with the downwind scheme of the convection term. The program to implement the presented method is written in FORTRAN 90 and applied to the inverse time identification of the pollutant release history and source location. Direct simulation is conducted in the range of, Reynolds number (2×103 ≤ Re ≤ 5×104) and Grashof number (106 ≤ Gr ≤ 9×109). In addition, the streamfunction and heatfunction are expressed streamlines and heatlines respectively. It is shown that the flow structure, heat transfer level and potential will depend on the interactions of external forced flow and thermal buoyancy driven flows. The numerical results indicated the proposed source identification algorithm is effective and robust in indoor environment.