Novel personalized and humidified air supply for airliner passengers

The micro-environment control in an airliner cabin presented here consists in supplying each of the passengers with her/his own supply of fresh, humidified air in order to prevent possible airborne health problems and to provide local compensation for the humidity deficit. Unlike the environment control systems widely used in commercial aircraft, each of the seats in the cabin will be supplied individually with a separate airflow, which is also separately exhausted. This arrangement forms a personalized microclimate in the seat area. Essentially, focusing a personal air supply into the breathing area of the passenger works on the principle of individual seat ventilation, with the air supply and exhaust nozzles built into the back of the seat ahead. The system design, originally based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models, has been verified by means of laboratory experiments. The results presented here have been achieved within the framework of FP6 EU Project AST5-CT-2006-030958, under the acronym SEAT (www.seat-project.org). (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.