Performance of personalized ventilation in a room with an underfloor air distribution system: transport of contaminants between occupants

Studies have documented that personalized ventilation, which provides clean air at each office workplace, is able to improve substantially the quality of air inhaled by occupants. However, the interaction between the airflow generated by personalized ventilation and the airflow pattern outside the workplaces has not been studied in detail. This paper presents a study on the performance of a personalized ventilation system installed in a full-scale test room with an underfloor air distribution system. Transport of human-produced airborne pollutants (in real life they can be infectious agents) between two occupants was examined using a tracer-gas. Two breathing thermal manikins were used to simulate occupants. The results show that the tested combination of personalized and underfloor ventilation was not able to decrease concentration of the human-produced airborne pollutants in air inhaled by the exposed manikin. The main conclusion is that the design of the personalised ventilation system and the interaction of personalized airflow and room airflow should be carefully considered in order to achieve minimal transport of pollution between occupants.