Simulation of Contaminant Dispersal in an Apartment Building

Bio-terrorism events (like the 2001 anthrax attacks) accentuate the importance of countering these incidents. In order to develop reliable countermeasures for these events, it is essential to understand the associated transport processes. The transport processes involved pose challenges as they occur over wide ranges of spatial and temporal scales. CONTAMW, a multi zone indoor air quality and ventilation analysis program is used to predict the contaminant dispersal in an apartment building. Detailed simulation results and analysis of controlled release of propylene within a generic apartment building is presented. A zonal analysis is carried out for the entire apartment building (using CONTAMW) to obtain time histories of propylene concentration in different zones. The simulations provide the dispersion, transport and contaminant concentration within each zone of the apartment. This study also considers the effect of flow obstructions and ventilation rates on contaminant dispersal. The results are validated with the experimental results reported in Cybyk et al. (1999). We have also simulated propylene transport in the apartment with FDS, a large eddy simulation model.