Quantification of how mechanical ventilation influences the airborne infection risk of COVID-19 and HVAC energy consumption in office buildings.

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an EnergyPlus-based parametric analysis to investigate the infection risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) under different mechanical ventilation scenarios for a typical medium-sized office building in various climate zones. A Wells-Riley (WR) based Gammaitoni-Nucci (GN) model was employed to quantitatively calculate the airborne infection risk. The selected parameters for the parametric analysis include the climate zone, outdoor air fraction, fraction of infectors, quanta generation rate, and exposure time. The loss and deposition of particles are not considered. The results suggest that the COVID-19 infection risk varies significantly with climate and season under different outdoor air fraction scenarios since the building heating and cooling load fundamentally

SUBMITTER: Pang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9528863 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature