ASSESSMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS OF AN AIR CLEANER UNIT IN AN ISOLATION ROOM WITH STRATIFIED AIR USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD)

摘要

If SARS or any other highly communicable disease is suspected, immediate isolation of the patient is recommended to reduce risk of spreading the disease. Hence, isolation wards have been reserved in large hospitals with special ventilation systems to deal with such cases. A defender is an air-purifying device used to remove germ-laden air, filter it and reintroduce in the room. The aim of this study was to simulate airflow in such a room with a working defender. It was noticed that heat sources affected the flow pattern of a room by stratifying the air. This provided the impetus to numerically model the isolation room along with the defender and then perform a parametric study by changing heat sources, geometry (both for room and defender) in order to solve the problem encountered in preliminary design optimization. This paper establishes the importance of stratification in determining efficiency or effectiveness of defender.