Abstract View
Numerical Investigation on Transport and Removal of Airborne Virus from a Hospital Room
SUNIL KUMAR, Maria King, Texas A&M University
Abstract Number: 438
Working Group: The Role of Aerosol Science in the Understanding of the Spread and Control of COVID-19 and Other Infectious Diseases
Abstract
The COVID-19 virus ability to spread from an infected person to a healthy person through cough and sneeze has made the situation more critical. The droplets generated in cough and sneeze has the ability to travel a significant distance before falling on the ground. However, the small droplets (< 50 μm) possibly containing coronavirus (known of size 60-80 nm) generated in the process gets suspended in the air and transported with the air currents. The isolation wards and hospital rooms used for keeping the patients for treatment is considered to be a highly unsafe zone. Controlling the spread of airborne infectious viruses including COVID-19 in a health care facility is a serious concern to patients, staff, and visitors. Most of the hospital rooms use ceiling-based exhaust air inlet/outlet ventilation. The ventilation air entering the room through the duct provides comfort to the occupants of the room. On the other hand, the ventilation air also transports and spreads the small size bacteria and airborne viruses in the room. To minimize the spread of airborne infections, the hospital rooms need to be designed in such a manner that the residence time of the airborne bacteria or virus is reduced to a minimum. In this paper, a detailed study has been presented to predict the spreading process of bacteria/viruses in a scaled NIH hospital room using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The study is focused on predicting the formation of different pockets of contaminated air with their dynamic locations at different times. The examination considers the installation of air-curtain and investigates their effect in limiting the spread of the virus with the removal of contaminated air. The paper incorporates CFD analysis of air movements in the room and recommends necessary changes in design for decreasing the residence time of contaminated air, which will help to protect the health care workers and visitors.