Effectiveness of Intermittent Personalized Ventilation Assisting Chilled Ceiling in Protecting Occupants Against Active Particles

In this work, an intermittent personalized ventilation (PV) system was coupled with a chilled ceiling system in an office space. The ability of this system in protecting occupants from active particulate matter due to an indoor contamination source was investigated. To perform this study, a 3D transient computational fluid dynamics model was used to determine the velocity, thermal, and particle concentration fields in the space. The fluid flow in the space was experimentally validated in previous works in a climatic chamber equipped with a thermal manikin representing an occupant in an office space. The validated model was used to perform a parametric study varying the intermittent PV operating frequency as well as the particle diameter. The results were used to recommend PV operating conditions, which would ensure the protection of occupant against the contaminants present in the macroclimate and deposited on nearby surfaces. It was found that the intermittent PV should operate at an average flow rate of 7.5 L/s and a frequency of 0.73 Hz. These conditions provided acceptable values of intake fraction in the breathing zone and surrounding microclimate and acceptable deposited fractions. Moreover, these conditions provided good thermal comfort levels (0.86: comfortable) and good protection against passive contaminants (ε_v,BZ = 64 %).