Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Analysis Assisted by Portable Sensing Devices for Precise Assessment of Indoor Environmental Conditions

Indoor air quality has become an emergent issue for human health since burdened outdoor environments, stagnant air conditions and indoor human activities (cooking, cleaning, etc.) increase the pollutant concentration. Some of the pollutants that interest the most for indoor environments are PM2.5, CO2, CO, VOCs, and NO2. These are measured by a wearable sensor- kit that is constructed by Applied electronics lab (APEL). Various working scenarios are set, such as human presence/absence and doing some indoor activities to measure the pollutants concentration in each case. Three kits are used and two of them are placed in the enclosed space and one close to the human body (wearable-kit). Most of the time it is noticed higher pollutant concentrations in enclosed space than those measured in atmospheric air by other local sensors. Along with the experiments, the enclosed space is computationally reconstructed and simulated for Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis. The momentum, mass transport phenomena were coupled and solved using Ansys CFX software. The same cases were tested and compared with the experimental measurements. Conclusions such as the poor quality of indoor space under various flow conditions and at specific hours during the day have been noticed, as well as the assessment of human exposure have been performed to improve the indoor environment.