Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a highly infectious disease that emerged in December of 2019, threatening human health and leading to global public health crises. Airborne transmission via droplets and aerosol has been recently recognized as one of the infection modes for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hospitals have deployed/incorporated indoor air purifiers with the hope to minimize the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 virus. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the indoor air purifier in reducing the transmission risk remained unknown. This study uses computational fluid dynamics to model the dispersion of the aerosol particles exhaled from the patient under the influence of an air conditioner, exhaust fans and air purifier. The numerical model showed that airflow from the diffusers, exhaust fans and placement of the air purifier significantly influenced the dispersion pattern of the aerosol particles in the common ward. Multiple air purifiers placed at 1 meter above the floor and next to a patient can increase the total efficiency from 37.14 to 59.91% for weak exhalation and from 36.44% to 48.81% for medium exhalation. No aerosol particles flew out from the door for weak and medium exhalation when multiple air purifiers were deployed in the common ward. Location and matching the clean air delivery rate with the size of the room are the important factors that affect the performance of the air purifier.
Highlights
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a pathogenic and airbornebased highly transmissible virus that threatens human health and public safety globally (Sharma et al, 2020)
To predict the effectiveness of the indoor air purifier in preventing the dispersion of the SARSCoV-2, a commercial computational fluid dynamic package ANSYS-CFX was used to characterize the dispersion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which is difficult to observe in the experimental visualization
The computational fluid dynamic analysis showed that more particles are concentrated at the front end of the common ward and escape the room through the door opening and exhaust fans
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a pathogenic and airbornebased highly transmissible virus that threatens human health and public safety globally (Sharma et al, 2020). Despite several reports claiming that portable air purifiers can reduce the PM2.5 in the spaces (McNamara et al, 2017; Shao et al, 2017) and the SARS-CoV-2 at home or hospital wards (Elias and Bar-Yam, 2020), the effectiveness of the indoor air purifier in reducing airborne transmission of the virus remains enigmatic. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the indoor air purifier in controlling SARSCoV-2 virus transmission at a common ward of COVID-19 hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The existing ventilation condition and placement of the indoor air purifier in the common ward are modelled in the computational fluid dynamics study. The distribution analysis of the trapped and escaped particles from the common ward was used to predict the effectiveness of the air purifier on the mitigation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission for the existing settings. The conclusion of the current findings is placed in the last section
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