scholarly journals Ventilación natural y calidad del aire interior en edificios de uso docente = Natural ventilation and indoor air quality in educational buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Martínez Pérez
Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (18) ◽  
pp. 6122
Author(s):  
María L. de la Hoz-Torres ◽  
Antonio J. Aguilar ◽  
Diego P. Ruiz ◽  
María Dolores Martínez-Aires

Indoor environmental conditions can significantly affect occupants’ health and comfort. These conditions are especially important in educational buildings, where students, teachers and staff spend long periods of the day and are vulnerable to these factors. Recently, indoor air quality has been a focus of attention to ensure that disease transmission in these spaces is minimised. In order to increase the knowledge in this field, experimental tests have been carried out to characterise the impact of natural ventilation strategies on indoor air quality and the acoustic environment. This study has evaluated three ventilation scenarios in four different classrooms in buildings of the University of Granada, considering different window and door opening configurations. Ventilation rates were estimated using the CO2 Decay Method, and background noise recordings were made in each classroom for acoustic tests. Results show that specific natural ventilation strategies have a relevant impact that is worth considering on the background noise in indoor spaces. In this sense ventilation rates provided by the different configurations varied between 3.7 and 39.8 air changes per hour (ACH) and the acoustic tests show a background noise ranging from 43 to 54 dBA in these scenarios. Consequently, managers and teachers should take into account not only the ACH, but also other collateral impacts on the indoor environmental conditions such as the thermal comfort or the acoustic environment.


Author(s):  
Farhang Tahmasebi ◽  
Yan Wang ◽  
Elizabeth Cooper ◽  
Daniel Godoy Shimizu ◽  
Samuel Stamp ◽  
...  

The Covid-19 outbreak has resulted in new patterns of home occupancy, the implications of which for indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy use are not well-known. In this context, the present study investigates 8 flats in London to uncover if during a lockdown, (a) IAQ in the monitored flats deteriorated, (b) the patterns of window operation by occupants changed, and (c) more effective ventilation patterns could enhance IAQ without significant increases in heating energy demand. To this end, one-year’s worth of monitored data on indoor and outdoor environment along with occupant use of windows has been used to analyse the impact of lockdown on IAQ and infer probabilistic models of window operation behaviour. Moreover, using on-site CO2 data, monitored occupancy and operation of windows, the team has calibrated a thermal performance model of one of the flats to investigate the implications of alternative ventilation strategies. The results suggest that despite the extended occupancy during lockdown, occupants relied less on natural ventilation, which led to an increase of median CO2 concentration by up to 300 ppm. However, simple natural ventilation patterns or use of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery proves to be very effective to maintain acceptable IAQ. Practical application: This study provides evidence on the deterioration of indoor air quality resulting from homeworking during imposed lockdowns. It also tests and recommends specific ventilation strategies to maintain acceptable indoor air quality at home despite the extended occupancy hours.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.9) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Norsafiah Norazman ◽  
Adi Irfan Che Ani ◽  
Nor Haslina Ja’afar ◽  
Muhamad Azry Khoiry

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is an essential matter in achieving students’ satisfaction for the learning process. Building’s orientation is a factor that may encourage sufficient natural ventilation for the classroom occupants. Inadequate ventilation is an issue for most existing classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the accuracy of natural ventilation in classrooms. Therefore, experimental on 20 classrooms has been conducted by using Multipurpose Meter at secondary school buildings in Malaysia. The findings indicated that the accuracy of natural ventilation testing was below the permissible limits throughout the hours monitored, thus this may cause potential health hazards to the students. Temperature and air flow rates were lower than 23 °C and 0.15 m/s respectively, it fulfilled the basic requirements as a standard learning environment. However, measurements taken showed the overall relative humidity (RH) in the classrooms can be categorized as acceptable with 40% to 70% range. On the basis of these findings, it is evident that naturally ventilated classrooms are important especially due to energy efficiency, whereas mechanical ventilation should only be installed as an alternative under extremely hot weather conditions.   


Author(s):  
M. F. Mohamed ◽  
M. Behnia ◽  
S. King ◽  
D. Prasad

Cross ventilation is a more effective ventilation strategy in comparison to single-sided ventilation. In the NSW Residential Flat Design Code1 (RFDC) the majority of apartments are required to adopt cross ventilation. However, in the case of studio and one-bedroom apartments, it is acknowledged that single-sided ventilation may prevail. Deep plan studio and one-bedroom apartments may achieve lower amenity of summer thermal comfort and indoor air quality where mechanical ventilation is not provided by air conditioning. Since compliance with the code may allow up to 40% of apartments in a development in Sydney to be single sided, it is important to understand the natural ventilation performance of such apartments. The objective of this paper is to investigate the natural ventilation potential in single-sided ventilated apartments to improve indoor air quality and thermal comfort. This investigation includes simulating various facade treatments involving multiple opening and balcony configurations. Balcony configurations are included in this study because, in Sydney, a balcony is a compulsory architectural element in any apartment building. The study uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to simulate and predict the ventilation performance of each apartment configuration. This study suggests that properly configured balconies and openings can significantly improve indoor ventilation performance for enhanced indoor air quality and thermal comfort, by optimizing the available prevailing wind. However, it is important to note that inappropriately designed fac¸ade treatments also could diminish natural ventilation performance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 595 ◽  
pp. 894-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Stabile ◽  
Marco Dell'Isola ◽  
Aldo Russi ◽  
Angelamaria Massimo ◽  
Giorgio Buonanno

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 357-367
Author(s):  
Liva Asere ◽  
Andra Blumberga

AbstractThe energy efficiency – indoor air quality dilemma is well known and the main drawback to operate the mechanical ventilation is electricity costs as concluded from previous studies. Educational buildings are one of the places where future taxpayers spend a lot of time. This paper aims to study an alternative solution on how to reduce energy efficiency – indoor air quality dilemma in educational buildings by adopting systems that use renewable energy sources. A typical education building in Latvia is taken as a case study by changing it from a consumer to prosumer. This building type has a specific electricity usage profile that makes the choice of photovoltaics (PV) power quite challenging so the various power options have been analysed and used for an electricity solution. Also, the more decentralised preference is chosen – disconnect from a public heating provider and using a local system with a pellet boiler. Educational buildings using PV can reduce the electricity tariff, but the payback periods are still not very satisfactory without subsidies. The average electricity tariff per month varies between scenarios and the best one is for the scenario with 30 kW installed power. The educational building partly using 16 kW PV system reduces not only its bill for electricity but also reduces CO2 emissions by around 36 tons. The education buildings as energy prosumers using renewable energy sources are reducing GHG emissions by having high indoor air quality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 180-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Stabile ◽  
Marco Dell’Isola ◽  
Andrea Frattolillo ◽  
Angelamaria Massimo ◽  
Aldo Russi

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