Abbaspour, Atefeh, BAHADORI-JAHROMI, ALI ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0405-7146, Janbey, Alan and Godfrey, Paulina (2025) Seasonal Performance of Background Ventilation in Improving Indoor Air Quality. In: 6th Euro-Mediterranean Conference for Environmental Integration, 15-18 May 2024, Marrakesh, Morocco.

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Abstract

The quality of indoor air significantly impacts the health, comfort, and produc-tivity of building occupants. Considering that individuals spend a significant amount of their time indoors, whether at home, work, university or other indoor environments, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is paramount. This study explores the seasonal effectiveness of background ventilation (BV) as an IAQ enhancement method in an educational building with mechanical ventilation.
Using CONTAM modeling, a multi-zonal analysis is conducted, focusing on a classroom equipped with trickle vents and air bricks. The study compares the classroom’s IAQ with and without BV implementation. Results indicate seasonal variations in BV efficacy.
During summer, BV shows its best performance, leading to 305.0 ppm aver-age reduction in CO2 concentrations during occupied periods. In winter, the aver-age reduction is at the lowest amount of 250.8 ppm. Furthermore, the implemen-tation of BV demonstrates better performance in reducing the percentage of CO2 levels higher than 1500 in the classroom during all seasons, showing a 38.5% average seasonal reduction. However, it only achieves an average reduction of 7.8% for CO2 levels higher than 1000 ppm.
This study emphasizes the dependency of BV's performance on outdoor con-ditions and underscores the need for complementary IAQ strategies. In other words, while BV contributes to reducing indoor CO2 levels, achieving the CO2 level below 1000 ppm, which represents the safe level of IAQ, requires its inte-gration with other IAQ improvement methods, such as opening windows and in-creasing the ventilation rate.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	Construction and engineering
Depositing User:	Atefeh Abbaspour
Date Deposited:	25 Feb 2025 08:38
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2025 11:00
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/13276
Sustainable Development Goals:	Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being

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