Abstract
During the normalization phase of the COVID-19 epidemic, society has gradually reverted to using building space, especially for public buildings, e.g., offices. Prevention of airborne pollutants has emerged as a major challenge. Ventilation strategies can contribute to mitigating the spread of airborne disease in an indoor environment, including increasing supply air rate, modifying ventilation mode, etc. The larger ventilation rate can inevitably lead to high energy consumption, which may be also ineffective in reducing infection risk. As a critical factor affecting the spread of viral contaminant, the potential of ventilation modes for control of COVID-19 should be explored. This study compared several ventilation strategies in the office, including mixing ventilation (MV), zone ventilation (ZV), stratum ventilation (SV) and displacement ventilation (DV), through analyzing ventilation performance and infection risk for the optimal one. By using ANSYS Fluent, the distributions of airflow and pollutant were simulated under various ventilation modes and infected occupants. The SV showed greater performance in mitigating infection disease spread than MV, ZV and DV, with an air distribution performance index (ADPI) of 90.5% and minimum infection risk of 13%. This work can provide a reference for development of ventilation strategies in public space oriented the prevention of COVID-19.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) manifested as a worldwide pandemic, leading to a global issue of the transmission mitigation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]
The ventilation performance and infection risk were evaluated using the evaluation models of air distribution performance index (ADPI) and modified Wells–Riley equation, to acquire the optimal ventilation mode applied to the office
The results indicate that the air was more sufficiently mixed for mixing ventilation (MV) and displacement ventilation (DV)
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) manifested as a worldwide pandemic, leading to a global issue of the transmission mitigation of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. There is growing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has the potential for airborne transmission [6,7]. Interventions such as using physical barrier [8]. Air filtration system [9,10] can be favorable to the removal of airborne contaminants, which is dependent on the efficient ventilation. In this context, an indoor ventilation system will play an important role in airborne transmission control of COVID-19 during the normalization phase of the epidemic [11]
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