Investigation of potential aerosol transmission and infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 through central ventilation systems

Pease, Leonard F.; Wang, Na; Salsbury, Timothy I.; Underhill, Ronald M.; Flaherty, Julia E.; Vlachokostas, Alex; Kulkarni, Gourihar; James, Dinah M.

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107633

Cited by 74 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Generation of virus was described in terms of quanta emission rates, where a quantum is the dose of airborne droplet nuclei expected to cause infection in 63% of susceptible people [26]. A typical value for quanta emission of 100 quanta/hr was used for the majority of this study based on literature [7,26], although different quanta emission values are considered in Section 4.1.3 to compare the risk of infection for different emission rates. The virus was generated directly in each well-mixed zone when the sick people were present based on the quanta emission rate.…”

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The viral decay in the room due to gravitational settling and the death of airborne viruses is modeled based on Equation 4, which has been used in literature to model viral decay in well-mixed zones [7]. This is described as:…”

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, R 0 (t) quickly flattens out after this interval as occupants leave and the virus concentration decreases. For this study, the values for viral decay and inhalation rate were chosen to be 0.48 hr −1 and 0.48 m 3 /hr based on literature [7].…”

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, Pease et al [7] investigated the effect of filtration, air change rate, and outdoor air fraction on the concentration of COVID-19 virus and probabilities of infection in a multi-room building. Similarly, they found filtration was the best method for reducing virus concentration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Investigation of HVAC Operation Strategies for Office Buildings During COVID-19 Pandemic

Faulkner¹,

Castellini²,

Lorenzetti³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To minimize the indoor transmission of contaminants, such as the virus that can lead to COVID-19, buildings must provide the best indoor air quality possible. Controlling indoor air quality is largely achieved by running the building’s HVAC system to dilute any concentration of indoor contaminants. However, doing so has practical downsides on the HVAC operation that are not always quantified in the literature. This paper develops a temporal simulation capability that is used to investigate the indoor virus concentration and operational cost of an HVAC system for two mitigation strategies: 1) supplying 100% outdoor air into the building and 2) using different HVAC filters, including MERV 10, ASHRAE minimum-recommended MERV 13, and highly rated HEPA filtration. These strategies are applied to a hypothetical medium office building consisting of five occupied zones and located in a cold and dry climate. We modeled the building using the Modelica Buildings library and developed new models for HVAC filtration and virus transmission to evaluate COVID-19 scenarios. We show that the ASHRAE-recommended MERV 13 filtration reduces the average virus concentration by about 10% when compared to MERV 10 filtration, with negligible additional operational cost. In contrast, the use of 100% outdoor air or HEPA filtration reduces the average indoor concentration by about an additional 3% compared to MERV 13 filtration, but significantly increases building operational cost. This is due to the significant increase in energy consumption when supplying 100%outdoor air and the higher cost of purchasing a HEPA filter.

show abstract

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Covid-19 Virus Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Investigation of HVAC Operation Strategies for Office Buildings During COVID-19 Pandemic

Faulkner¹,

Castellini²,

Lorenzetti³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, many local and global procedures have been recommended that have heavily impacted daily life [ 13 , 27 , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] ]. The WHO called on all countries to reduce transmission through specific steps like: detect, test, treat, isolate, trace, and mobilize citizens [ 33 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and urban spaces: A new integrated CFD approach for public health opportunities

Hassan

Megahed

2021

Building and Environment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Safe urban public spaces are vital owing to their impacts on public health, especially during pandemics such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Urban public spaces and urbanscape elements must be designed with the risk of viral transmission in mind. This work therefore examines how the design of urbanscape elements can be revisited to control COVID-19 transmission dynamics. Nine proposed models of urban public seating were thus presented and assessed using a transient three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, with the Eulerian–Lagrangian method and discrete phase model (DPM). The proposed seating models were evaluated by their impact on the normalized air velocity, the diameter of coughing droplets, and deposition fraction. Each of the proposed models demonstrated an increase in the normalized velocity, and a decrease in the deposition fraction by >29%. Diagonal cross linear and curved triangle configurations demonstrated an improved airflow momentum and turbulent flow, which decreased the droplets deposition fraction by 68%, thus providing an improved, healthier urban public seating option.

show abstract

Implemented indoor airborne transmission mitigation strategies during COVID-19: a systematic review

Saeedi

Ahmadi

Hassanvand

et al. 2023

J Environ Health Sci Engineer

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted major economic and health burdens across the world. On the other hand, the potential airborne transmission of SARS-COV-2 via air can deeply undermine the effectiveness of countermeasures against spreading the disease. Therefore, there is an intense focus to look for ways to mitigate the COVID-19 spread within various indoor settings. This work systematically reviewed articles regarding airborne transmission of SARS-COV2 in various indoor settings since the onset of the pandemic. The systematic search was performed in Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases and has returned 19 original articles carefully screened with regard to inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results showed that the facilities, such as dormitories and classrooms, received the most attention followed by office buildings, healthcare facilities, residential buildings, and other potential enclosed spaces such as a metro wagon. Besides, the majority of the studies were conducted experimentally while other studies were done using computer simulations. United States (n = 5), Spain (n = 4) and China (n = 3) were the top three countries based on the number of performed research. Ventilation rate was the most influential parameter in controlling the infection spread. CO 2 was the primary reference for viral spread in the buildings. The use of natural ventilation or a combination of mechanical and natural ventilations was found to be highly effective in the studies. The current work helps in furthering research on effective interventions to improve indoor air quality and control the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40201-023-00847-0.

show abstract

Investigation of potential aerosol transmission and infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 through central ventilation systems

Cited by 74 publications

References 24 publications

Investigation of HVAC Operation Strategies for Office Buildings During COVID-19 Pandemic

Investigation of HVAC Operation Strategies for Office Buildings During COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 and urban spaces: A new integrated CFD approach for public health opportunities

Implemented indoor airborne transmission mitigation strategies during COVID-19: a systematic review

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About