The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the significance of indoor air quality and how the air moves during the circulation process. The air movement is also connected to physical distancing measures that were used in establishments that reopened, such as restaurants, schools, and music halls.
Contaminants, especially aerosols, remain airborne for prolonged periods and travel long distances, increasing the risk of infection to occupants in an indoor space. The airflow dynamics play an important role in determining the movement and concentration of particles and are affected by ventilation airflow rate, pressure differences, and temperature changes.
In these instances, to get a clearer idea of what’s going on, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used to predict the airflow patterns in an indoor space to optimally determine the location of the return ducts where most of the pathogens exit the room.
All heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems distribute a combination of outdoor (fresh) air and indoor air to reduce energy consumption.
The air inside a room is either exhausted, reconditioned then resupplied, or can escape (passive relief) through gaps. The recirculated air carries contaminants that are smaller than 1µ (micron) and air filters in the HVAC systems are often ineffective in removing pathogens that are very small. These pathogens are then distributed to other spaces in the building and increase the risk of infection to other occupants.
SteriSpace Air Sterilization technology provides an effective indoor air treatment solution. SteriSpace destroys airborne biological pathogens and can be a stand-alone unit for a room or integrated into a building air handling system and can be customized for different configurations. A CFD study simulated and compared the dispersion of pathogens released by an infected patient sitting in a clinic room with a conventional HVAC system and in a clinic room with the SteriSpace system.
A higher particle concentration (30% more) was removed by the SteriSpace system compared to a conventional ventilation system. A small percentage of exhausted pathogens were reintroduced through the supply duct to the room that was not treated by the conventional HVAC system.
However, SteriSpace technology treated all pathogens passing through the supply duct. It was shown that more airborne particles would contaminate a room without SteriSpace, increasing the risk of infection.
The SteriSpace technology can also be used in patient isolation shelters to prevent the transmission of the Coronavirus to unaffected people. CFD was used to simulate an isolation system for a negative pressure room (airborne infectious isolation [AII] room) and a positive pressure room, whereby an infectious patient was located in the AII room.
In a conventional HVAC system, some contaminants exhausted from the AII room were introduced in the positive pressure room due to inefficient filtering of the pathogens. The airborne pathogens in the positive pressure room increased with time as respiratory particles traveled through the ventilation system and increased the risk of infection to occupants in that space. However, when a SteriSpace system was linked to the isolation system, the exhausted pathogens were treated, and only clean, sterile air was supplied to the positive pressure room, ensuring the safety of the patient. Additionally, the SteriSpace system operated at a higher flow rate than the conventional ventilation system and hence make-up air was required to maintain the pressure inside the rooms.
The findings of these studies can be generalized to any scenario where a centralized ventilation system is employed for thermal comfort and air quality control. If the air in a subspace of a building is contaminated, the SteriSpace system will remove the contaminants at a faster rate and will also ensure that the removed air is treated so that occupants in other subspaces of the building are not compromised.
SteriSpace is a unique and patented air sterilization technology that uses compressive heating to eliminate biological and chemical contaminants from continuous large volume air flows.
Different from and more effective than traditional air purification systems centered around HEPA, the SteriSpace technology can destroy biological pathogens such as bacterial spores, allergens, airborne viruses, and airborne bacteria.
Schedule a call with one of our air sterilization specialists to learn more about how SteriSpace can be a game-changer in maintaining optimal air quality in your industry!
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