Abstract
As businesses gradually reopen and employees return to work, the potential spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants through airborne transmission via the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems of commercial building raises concerns. Since the general practice in commercial buildings is to use low-efficiency air filters and given that indoor air is generally recycled, the degree to which cross-zone aerosol transmission occurs is of interest. To quantify the cross-zone aerosol transmission, experiments were conducted using a synthetic test aerosol in the five zones on the first floor of a model commercial office building at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Because the synthetic aerosol was tagged with fluorescent salt, the aerosol generated from the source zone can be distinguished from the background aerosols due to its unique fluorescent signal. Data from cross-zone campaigns showed that submicron-aerosol transmission was higher than the micron aerosols. In campaigns with doors closed, the submicron aerosol transmission was less than 16% and less than 11% for micron aerosol transmission. Opening the interior doors that connecting different zones can significantly enhance the aerosol transmission for zones at the close proximity to the source, but has less impact on those farther away.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 105744 |
| Journal | International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer |
| Volume | 130 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This research was supported at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the DOE Office of Science through the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory, a consortium of DOE national laboratories focused on the response to COVID-19, with funding provided by the Coronavirus CARES Act. Anthony Gehl and Seungjae Lee are acknowledged for assistance in experimental setup and building sensors. This research used resources at the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-BATTELLE, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |
| Office of Science | |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
Keywords
- Aerosol transmissions
- Indoor air
- SARS-CoV-2
- Ventilation
