- Author
- Walton, G. N.
- Title
- Estimating Interroom Contaminant Movements.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Department of Energy, Washington, DC
- Report
- NBSIR 85-3229, November 1985,
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
- ventilation; air pollution; contaminants; energy; air flow; circulation; models
- Identifiers
- indoor air pollution; computer applications
- Abstract
- Development of infiltration and interroom airflow calculation methods, driven by a concern for indoor air quality have led to a computer simulation of interroom contaminant movement. The model, which assumes fully mixed room air, shows that open doorways provide rapid mixing between rooms in buildings using forced air heating. It also confirms that it is most energy efficient to remove the contaminant nearest its source. Detailed modeling of the variations in contaminant concentration within a room is not presently feasible. The concept of ventilation effectiveness should provide sufficient accuracy and reasonable computing speed to be added to some existing energy analysis programs. Current energy analysis programs with long timesteps tend to run into convergence problems when solving the system performance and interroom airflows simultaneously. Short timestep simulation may be required. The need for computer modeling is demonstrated by the subtle behavior of a very simple system which removes contaminants by forced ventilation.