The paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) provides care to critically ill neonates, infants and children. These patients are vulnerable and susceptible to the environment surrounding them, yet there is little information available on indoor air quality and factors affecting it within a PICU. To address this gap in knowledge we conducted continuous indoor and outdoor airborne particle concentration measurements over a two-week period at the Royal Children's Hospital PICU in Brisbane, Australia, and we also collected 82 bioaerosol samples to test for the presence of bacterial and viral pathogens. Our results showed that both 24-hour average indoor particle mass (PM) (0.6-2.2μgm, median: 0.9μgm) and submicrometer particle number (PN) (0.1-2.8×10pcm, median: 0.67×10pcm) concentrations were significantly lower (p<0.01) than the outdoor concentrations (6.7-10.2μgm, median: 8.0μgm for PM and 12.1-22.2×10pcm, median: 16.4×10pcm for PN). In general, we found that indoor particle concentrations in the PICU were mainly affected by indoor particle sources, with outdoor particles providing a negligible background. We identified strong indoor particle sources in the PICU, which occasionally increased indoor PN and PM concentrations from 0.1×10 to 100×10pcm, and from 2μgm to 70μgm, respectively. The most substantial indoor particle sources were nebulization therapy, tracheal suction and cleaning activities. The average PM and PN emission rates of nebulization therapy ranged from 1.29 to 7.41mgmin and from 1.20 to 3.96pmin×10, respectively. Based on multipoint measurement data, it was found that particles generated at each location could be quickly transported to other locations, even when originating from isolated single-bed rooms. The most commonly isolated bacterial genera from both primary and broth cultures were skin commensals while viruses were rarely identified. Based on the findings from the study, we developed a set of practical recommendations for PICU design, as well as for medical and cleaning staff to mitigate aerosol generation and transmission to minimize infection risk to PICU patients.
The recover of condensation heat in fossil fuel power plant in summer was difficult. In this paper, a scheme that using condensation heat for cooling was proposed. Firstly, cooling water was used as low temperature resource to produce mid-temperature hot water, and mid-temperature hot water could be used as heat source in the absorption refrigerator. At the same time, the condensing heat of refrigeration system was transmit to saturated air from cooling tower and made air leaved far from saturation area thereby to control the visible plume. Thermodynamic analysis shows that this scheme is feasible, and economical analysis also shows that this scheme is feasible when heat resource of absorption-type heat pump using waste heat.
This study focused on the basic performance and analysis of a newly developed composite filter media used in high temperature filtration for bag house. It consists of basalt and polysulfonamide fibers. Thermal dimensional stability, heat resistance, air permeability and chemical corrosion resistance were tested to reveal the properties. Based on the experimental results, possible analysis showed that the new filter material had excellent performance in heat resistance, air permeability and acid corrosion.
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