Evaluation of Exhaled Infectious Agents Transmission between Occupants under Different Ventilation Systems Indoors

The transmission of exhaled aerosols between two occupants under three total volume ventilation systems called mixing ventilation (MV), displacement ventilation (DV), and under-floor air distribution (UFAD) combined with two types of personalized ventilation (PV) systems was investigated numerically using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method in a full-scale test room. Two particle sizes 0.8μm and 16μm as well as tracer gas were studied. Two indexes i.e. normalized concentration and ventilation effectiveness were used to evaluate the performance of the ventilation systems. It was found that PV enhanced the concentration level of tracer gas and fine particles in the breathing zone under DV and UFAD based ventilation systems. Using PV couldn't help improve the quality of inhaled air for DV based systems but could get the inhaled air quality of MV and UFAD based systems better.