Personalized kitchen air supply for reducing individual thermal discomfort and cooking pollution intake

Abstract

High ambient temperature and cooking activities that produce pollutants and waste heat usually make the indoor air quality and thermal environment of residential kitchen unfavorable in summer. Personalized kitchen air supply (PKAS) could be applied to relieve the thermal discomfort and cooking pollution intake of cooking staff. This paper investigated a personalized air supply method of residential kitchen in summer. The residential kitchen was depicted in computational fluid dynamics simulation by realizable k-ε model and discrete ordinate radiation model to reflect the complex thermal characteristics of stove. Based on orthogonal analysis, exhaust rate, exhaust outlet baffle width, and supply air angle were significant factors affecting the concentration of pollutant in kitchen space, whereas exhaust rate and air supply rate were significant factors affecting the intake fraction. Single-factor analysis was further conducted to find better parameter configurations of PKAS for pollutant control. Then, thermal comfort experiments with and without air supply were carried out. When the air supply volume was 280 m³/h and the air supply temperature was 21 °C, the thermal discomfort of subjects can be effectively improved against an uncomfortable condition of 30 °C background temperature, 80 % relative humidity, and a localized heat source intensity of 4.5 kW. The result of this paper can provide valuable information to develop PKAS for better thermal discomfort improvement and cooking pollutants control.