Three-dimensional analysis for hospital operating room thermal comfort and contaminant removal

This paper presents a three-dimensional analysis for thermal comfort and contaminant removal in a hospital operating room. The room model includes a patient lying on an operating table, four surgical staff members standing around, and surgical lights above the patient. Cold clean air is supplied to the room through high sidewall grilles and exhausted through low sidewall grilles on the opposite wall. Steady-state heat and mass transfer in the room are simulated by employing computational fluid dynamics modeling approach. Solutions of the distribution of airflow velocity, temperature, relative humidity, and contaminant concentration are presented and discussed. The simulation results show a good agreement with experimental data from the literature. The predicted mean vote (PMV) is calculated for assessing thermal comfort of the occupants. The contaminant removal effectiveness (CRE) and the mean contaminant concentration in the breathing zone are used to assess the ventilation performance of the room. Effects of horizontal locations of supply and exhaust grilles on thermal comfort and contaminant removal are explored. Regression models for thermal comfort and contaminant removal as functions of these locations are built for design optimization. It is found that an overall better performance can be achieved by placing the supply grilles closer to the vertical centerline of the wall while the location of the exhaust grilles is somewhat insignificant. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.