Energy Performance of Gas Phase Air Cleaning

  DESCRIPTION OF THE SESSION
Ventilation accounts for approximately 20% of the global energy use for providing an acceptable indoor environment. The requirements for ventilation in most standards and guidelines assume acceptable quality of (clean) outdoor air.

Worldwide, there is an increasing number of publications related to air cleaning and there is also an increasing sale of gas phase air cleaning products. This puts a demand for verifying the influence of using air cleaning on indoor air quality, comfort, well-being, and health. It is thus important to learn whether air cleaning can supplement ventilation with respect to improving air quality i.e., whether it can partly substitute the ventilation rates required by standards. Finally, the energy impact of using air cleaning as supplement of ventilation needs to be estimated.

This project focuses on gas phase air cleaning and does not include filtration.

In many locations in the world, the outdoor air quality is so bad that it is better to avoid ventilation with outdoor air. In such case, the alternative is to substitute ventilation with air cleaning so that the indoor air quality can be kept high.

Even when outdoor air quality is good, the use of air cleaning substituting ventilation with outdoor air could reduce the rate of outside air supplied indoors and thereby energy for conditioning (heating/cooling) the ventilation air, filtration and for transporting the air (fan energy) can be saved.

The session will focus on the energy performance of gas phase air cleaning. Standalone air cleaners may improve air quality by delivering a certain Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR). For the same level of air quality, the ventilation rate can be reduced by a similar amount. However, standalone air cleaners are also using energy. Air cleaners build into the ventilation system may increase pressure drop and using some power, which both increase the energy use.

A couple of studies based on models and dynamic building simulations on energy use for heating, cooling, and ventilation have been used to study the overall energy implications of using gas phase air cleaners. The results will be presented and discussed in this session.

  OBJECTIVES OF THE SESSION

  • Introduce IEA EBC Annex 78
  • Present and discuss energy performance of build in gas phase air cleaning technology.
  • Present and discuss energy performance of standalone air cleaners.
  • Present key performance indicators (KPIs) for the energy performance

  SESSION PROGRAMME

    1. Introduction to IEA EBC Annex 78,  Bjarne W. Olesen, International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
    2. Air purification as an alternative to increased ventilation in office buildings. Alireza Afshari, Department of the Built Environment (BUILD), Aalborg University Copenhagen, 
    3. Exploring the Energy-Saving Benefits of Gas-Phase Air Cleaning in Nordic Buildings, Sasan Sadrizadeh, Fluid and Climate Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
    4. Gas phase air cleaning effects on ventilation energy use and KPI’s for Energy Performance, Dragos-Ioan Bogatu, International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

  SESSION CHAIRS

    1. Bjarne W. Olesen, International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
    2. Sasan Sadrizadeh, Fluid and Climate Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

  SESSION DURATION

  –75 minutes

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Prof. Sani Dimitroulopoulou (UK Health Security Agency, UKHSA)

Sani is a Principal Environmental Public Health Scientist, Air Quality and Public Health, UKHSA (formerly Public Health England, PHE) leading on indoor air quality and health.
She is also Visiting Professor, at Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, UCL.
 
Her research interests include exposure assessment to air pollution, based on modelling and monitoring of outdoor and indoor air pollution and ventilation, health impact assessments and development of environmental public health indicators and indoor air quality guidelines.
She works closely with colleagues from UK Government Departments (e.g. DHSC, DfE, DLUHC, Defra, DESNZ) and Organisations (e.g. WHO, NICE, CIBSE, RCP/RCPCH, BSI) to provide expert advice on indoor air quality and health. She participated in the Cross Whitehall Group for the revision of the Building Regulations, Part F and she sits on the Advisory Board organised by DLUHC for the revision of HHSRS (Housing Health and Safety Rating System). She was the UKHSA project manager for the development of the DHSC/UKHSA/DLUHC guidance on “Damp and mould: understanding and addressing the health risks for rented housing providers”. She is the Chair of UK Indoor Environments Group (UKIEG).

Dr. Ana Maria Scutaru

Ana Maria Scutaru is a scientist at the German Environment Agency (UBA) in Berlin. She received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the Institute of Pharmacy at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2011. Her work focuses on the health-related evaluation of building products emissions into indoor air and other indoor air related topics. Ana Maria Scutaru is the secretary of the Committee for Health-related Evaluation of Building Products (AgBB) and of the EU-LCI Working Group within the harmonisation framework for health-based evaluation of indoor emissions from construction products in the European Union.

Corinne Mandin earned her PhD in environmental chemistry from the University of Rennes, France.
She has been working on human exposure to chemical substances and physical agents and the related health effects, first at INERIS (French national institute for industrial environment and risks) for 8 years, and then at CSTB (French scientific and technical center for building) for 13 years. At CSTB, she coordinated the French Indoor Air Quality Observatory, a public research program created in 2001 to carry out nationwide surveys on air quality in buildings. In 2022, she joined the French institute for radiation protection and nuclear safety (IRSN) where she leads the radiation epidemiology group.
She has been involved in various European and international projects and expert committees, including at the World Health Organization and the European Joint Research Center. She is currently chairing the expert committee dedicated to outdoor and indoor air quality at the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses). She was president of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) from 2020 to 2022. In 2022, she coedited the Handbook of Indoor Air Quality (Springer).