Abstract View
Design-Aided Mitigation of the Spread of Virus Aerosols
SUNIL KUMAR, Maria King, Texas A&M University
Abstract Number: 527
Working Group: Infectious Aerosols in the Age of COVID-19
Abstract
The fast spread of the COVID-19 pandemic compelled countries to impose lockdown, restrict movement of people, limit the industrial production, impacting supply chains to control the spread of the coronavirus. However, production cannot be shut down for extended time as closing of industries would lead to food and health crisis. Depending on the type of the work employees are either required to work alone or stand in queue. Processing food, packaging items and processing meat require workers to stand next to each other around the conveyor belts. In general, these facilities are ventilated by central heating and air conditioning units. The air streams generated from ventilation ports are complex and long, which can transport the virus aerosols from one corner of the food processing plant to another corner. In a closed environment of this kind, a single sneeze from an asymptomatic worker can potentially spread the virus to the whole facility and turn it to be a super spreader for the community. In general, the fabrication rooms or packaging units are not designed to effectively reduce the risk of virus transport under the influence of HVAC system. Therefore, necessary design modifications are needed to control the spread of virus aerosols in closed workplaces. This study presents an efficient and economic design modification of the common space at a fabrication facility, by preventing the development of long air streamlines to reduce the spread of sneeze droplets. The modified design includes installation of optimal size transparent plastic sheets around the employees’ workspace. The improved design has been tested for different environmental conditions and ventilation rates. The study provides a comprehensive insight into understanding the role of ventilation system and presents possible pathways to reduce the spread of virus aerosols in any industry irrespective of its size and type of work.