Abstract
Ambient and indoor air pollution have high impact on public health. Safety of indoor air is crucial for well-being and stress tolerance of seafarers due to their prolonged stay in the environment characterized by adjacency of work and leisure premises. Flaws in ventilation and air distribution systems may lead to infiltration and accumulation of pollutants in air of living and recreation premises. However, available onboard HVAC systems designs are not fit to ensure cleanliness and quality of the indoor air of ships accommodation. In this study a new approach for indoor air quality management on board merchant ships is proposed. Air quality standards and requirements analyzed and formal representation formulated. Approximation techniques for thermal comfort index PMV reviewed and computationally efficient polynomial representation proposed. Unified dynamic model of microclimate, thermal comfort and gas composition of air is developed. Model performance was studied in simulation environment with superstructure microclimate model of a real ship. As a proof of the hypothesis a preliminary prototype developed and tested on board of gas carrier vessel. A proposed control optimization problem statement allows implementation of a wide range of indoor air quality and comfort management systems at scale. Prototype multiparameter controller based on microprocessor technology showed potential of performance improvement and scalability for development of distributed control systems.
Highlights
Growing competition and cost cutting in maritime transportation business are key factors in reduction of onboard crews down to the minimum with perspective of replacing traditional ships by unmanned alternatives or retrofitting existing ships with autonomous technologies
Workload and stress of seafarers rises which has a direct impact on vessel safety (Elspeth et al.,2021)
Purpose and methods of research The article focuses on formalization of indoor air quality requirements and development of a combined mathematical model of the microclimate, thermal comfort and gas composition
Summary
Growing competition and cost cutting in maritime transportation business are key factors in reduction of onboard crews down to the minimum with perspective of replacing traditional ships by unmanned alternatives or retrofitting existing ships with autonomous technologies. Studies have shown insufficient level of air cleanliness and quality on board of some types of merchant vessels (Webster et al, 2005, Kim et al, 2008, Kim et al, 2010, Kennedy, 2019). Indoor air quality as a measure of its cleanliness along with thermal comfort influence occupant productivity (Alhorr, 2016). Depending on the type of vessel and the purpose of the premises, they are divided into classes according to the degree of accommodation: without presence, with partial periodic presence and with round-the-clock presence. Depending on the class of accommodation, there is a need to consider the human element and the associated social aspect of safety of the crew and ship, as it is necessary to create living conditions for people of the appropriate level of safety and comfort
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