Impact of air distribution on indoor formaldehyde abatement with/without passive removal material: A CFD modeling

In this paper, a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed to study the effect of various air distribution technologies on formaldehyde abatement indoors, with and without a sorptive ceiling tile as the passive removal material (PRM). An experiment was performed in a 22.6 m(3) test room by a pulse injection of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) as a tracer gas, and the turbulent diffusion coefficient was evaluated through the curve fitting of the CFD model to the experimental data. Formaldehyde adsorption on the sorptive ceiling tile was obtained in a laboratory test chamber (0.4 m(3)) via continuous injection of 100 mu g m(-3) formaldehyde at 21 +/- 2 degrees C and 50 +/- 5% relative humidity: The experiment was conducted over the period of 20 days. A one-dimensional mathematical model was developed to evaluate the adsorption coefficient of formaldehyde towards the PRM in the laboratory test chamber using curve fitting analysis. To study the impact of air distribution technologies for such application, six different scenarios were considered for CFD simulation. These included, displacement ventilation (DV), mixing ventilation (MV), and four different types of overhead mixing ventilations (OMV). Simulation results at the steady-state condition showed that when a sorptive ceiling tile was implemented as a PRM in the test room, a noticeable reduction of formaldehyde concentration was observed in the breathing zone, for all air distribution patterns. The health risk assessment of formaldehyde in the breathing zone showed a safer level of this compound when mechanical ventilation and PRM were applied together.

Automated summary

In this study, a CFD model was developed to study the effect of various air distribution technologies and a sorptive ceiling tile on formaldehyde abatement indoors. The results showed that the implementation of a sorptive ceiling tile as a passive removal material led to a noticeable reduction of formaldehyde concentration in the breathing zone.