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Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom
Many indoor places, including aged classrooms and offices, prisons, homeless shelters, etc., are poorly ventilated but resource-limited to afford expensive ventilation upgrades or commercial air purification systems, raising concerns on the safety of opening activities in these places in the era of...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
AIP Publishing LLC
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8142835/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34040337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0050058 |
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author | He, Ruichen Liu, Wanjiao Elson, John Vogt, Rainer Maranville, Clay Hong, Jiarong |
author_facet | He, Ruichen Liu, Wanjiao Elson, John Vogt, Rainer Maranville, Clay Hong, Jiarong |
author_sort | He, Ruichen |
collection | PubMed |
description | Many indoor places, including aged classrooms and offices, prisons, homeless shelters, etc., are poorly ventilated but resource-limited to afford expensive ventilation upgrades or commercial air purification systems, raising concerns on the safety of opening activities in these places in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this challenge, using computational fluid dynamics, we conducted a systematic investigation of airborne transmission in a classroom equipped with a single horizontal unit ventilator (HUV) and evaluate the performance of a low-cost box fan air cleaner for risk mitigation. Our study shows that placing box fan air cleaners in the classroom results in a substantial reduction of airborne transmission risk across the entire space. The air cleaner can achieve optimal performance when placed near the asymptomatic patient. However, without knowing the location of the patient, the performance of the cleaner is optimal near the HUV with the air flowing downwards. In addition, we find that it is more efficient in reducing aerosol concentration and spread in the classroom by adding air cleaners in comparison with raising the flow rate of HUV alone. The number and placement of air cleaners need to be adjusted to maintain their efficacy for larger classrooms and to account for the thermal gradient associated with a human thermal plume and hot ventilation air during cold seasons. Overall, our study shows that box fan air cleaners can serve as an effective low-cost alternative for mitigating airborne transmission risks in poorly ventilated spaces. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8142835 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | AIP Publishing LLC |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81428352021-05-24 Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom He, Ruichen Liu, Wanjiao Elson, John Vogt, Rainer Maranville, Clay Hong, Jiarong Phys Fluids (1994) Articles Many indoor places, including aged classrooms and offices, prisons, homeless shelters, etc., are poorly ventilated but resource-limited to afford expensive ventilation upgrades or commercial air purification systems, raising concerns on the safety of opening activities in these places in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this challenge, using computational fluid dynamics, we conducted a systematic investigation of airborne transmission in a classroom equipped with a single horizontal unit ventilator (HUV) and evaluate the performance of a low-cost box fan air cleaner for risk mitigation. Our study shows that placing box fan air cleaners in the classroom results in a substantial reduction of airborne transmission risk across the entire space. The air cleaner can achieve optimal performance when placed near the asymptomatic patient. However, without knowing the location of the patient, the performance of the cleaner is optimal near the HUV with the air flowing downwards. In addition, we find that it is more efficient in reducing aerosol concentration and spread in the classroom by adding air cleaners in comparison with raising the flow rate of HUV alone. The number and placement of air cleaners need to be adjusted to maintain their efficacy for larger classrooms and to account for the thermal gradient associated with a human thermal plume and hot ventilation air during cold seasons. Overall, our study shows that box fan air cleaners can serve as an effective low-cost alternative for mitigating airborne transmission risks in poorly ventilated spaces. AIP Publishing LLC 2021-05 2021-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8142835/ /pubmed/34040337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0050058 Text en © 2021 Author(s) Published under license by AIP Publishing. 1070-6631/2021/33(5)/057107/14/$30.00 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ). |
spellingShingle | Articles He, Ruichen Liu, Wanjiao Elson, John Vogt, Rainer Maranville, Clay Hong, Jiarong Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title | Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title_full | Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title_fullStr | Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title_full_unstemmed | Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title_short | Airborne transmission of COVID-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
title_sort | airborne transmission of covid-19 and mitigation using box fan air cleaners in a poorly ventilated classroom |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8142835/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34040337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0050058 |
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