Airborne Infection Isolation Rooms (AIIRs) are used in hospitals to counter the spread of airborne infections. These rooms usually work well as long as the doors to the patient rooms are closed. However, passage through open doorways initiates air flows that may lead to containment failure. This paper presents a new “Air Flow Door Barrier” system for AIIRs and analyses its efficiency through CFD simulations. The overset mesh method is used to represent a hinged door and a person transiting from the patient room to the anteroom. The new system consists of a fan which introduces filtered patient room air into the anteroom through large displacement diffusors. It runs in synchronization with the door operator and produces an evenly distributed velocity across the open doorway. It is found that the system has the potential to remove nearly all transfer of air out from the patient room. The development of the system is part of an ongoing project aimed at finding cost-effective solutions for retrofitting existing patient rooms. However, the system also has the potential to be beneficial when considering inclusion in new standard AIIRs.
The present work introduces an innovative yet feasible heating system consisting of a ground source heat pump, borehole thermal energy storage, an auxiliary heater, radiators, and ventilation coils. The concept is developed by designing a new piping configuration monitored by a smart control system to reduce the return flow temperature and increase the temperature differential between the supply and return flows. The radiators and ventilation heating circuits are connected in series to provide the heat loads with the same demand. The investigation of the proposed model is performed through developed Python code considering a case study hospital located in Norway. The article presents, after validation of the primary heating system installed in the hospital, a parametric investigation to evaluate the effect of main operational parameters on the performance metrics of both the heat pump and the total system. According to the results, the evaporator temperature is a significant parameter that considerably impacts the system performance. The parametric study findings show that the heat pumps with a thermal capacity of 400 kW and 600 kW lead to the highest heat pump and total seasonal performance factors, respectively. It is also observed that increasing the heat pump capacity does not affect the performance indicators when the condensation temperature is 40 °C and the heat recovery is 50%. Moreover, choosing a heat pump with a smaller capacity at the heat recovery of 75% (or higher) would be an appropriate option because the seasonal performance values are not varied by changing the heat pump capacity. The results reveal that reducing return temperature under a proper parameters selection results in substantially higher seasonal performance factors of the heat pump and total system. These outcomes are in-line with the United Nations sustainable development goals including Sustainable Cities and Communities.
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