Designing Energy Efficient and Immune Buildings: Application of Advanced Air Purification System

通风系统，就其设计本质而言，是一种引入室外空气，捕获和稀释颗粒、微生物和化学物质等污染物，并将其排到室外的手段。这些典型的污染物已经在ASHRAE通风标准中得到了明确的认可，该标准要求通风率规格基于居住者以及其他室内/室外来源的贡献，这意味着需要增加通风率。增加通风率和室外送风率一般可改善室内空气质素；然而，它们也可能导致全球能源消耗的大幅增加。空气净化可以提供改善室内空气质量的关键策略，同时减少室外空气供应，从而节省能源。***空气净化技术，如吸附和紫外线光催化氧化（UV-PCO）过滤器通常应用于商业空气净化器的技术，有一些轶事报道显示它们对此类应用的有用性。这些装置如能正常运作，可在减少建筑物能源消耗和清除化学污染物方面发挥重要作用，从而改善住户的福祉和建筑物的能源效益。然而，有一些参数对这些系统的性能的影响还没有得到彻底的研究（环境温度、高相对湿度、高空气流速、污染物混合物等）。此外，目标污染物的不完全氧化可能导致CO和一些有机副产物（即甲醛）的形成，这些产物对建筑物居住者的危害比目标污染物更大。***提出的研究工作旨在解决上述所有问题，使PCO技术在不断变化的世界中成为暖通空调系统中成熟可靠的选择。我们的调查将扩展到新兴关注的污染物，而不仅仅局限于传统的空气污染物。随着越来越多为去除气相空气污染物而设计的空气净化设备进入市场，制定一套评估其性能和开发设计工具的程序至关重要。这项研究的长期目标是进行全面的研究，以尽量减少/消除空气净化系统产生的副产品，提高其去除效率和能源效率，开发有效的再生技术，开发设计工具，并制定通用的评估标准。**

Ventilation systems, by their very nature of design, are a means to bring in outdoor air and trap and dilute contaminants such as particulates, microorganisms and chemicals, and exhaust them to the outdoor. These typical contaminants have been recognized explicitly in the ASHRAE ventilation standard, which requires that the ventilation rate specifications be based on the contribution from occupants as well as other indoor/outdoor sources, implying that an increased ventilation rate is needed. Increased ventilation rates and outdoor air supply rates can generally enhance indoor air quality (IAQ); however, they can also result in a large increase of global energy consumption. Air purification can provide a key strategy to improving IAQ while reducing outdoor air supply with concomitant energy savings.***Air cleaning technologies such as adsorption and ultraviolet photo catalyst oxidation (UV-PCO) filters are commonly applied technologies in commercial air cleaners and there are some anecdotal reports showing their usefulness for such applications. These devices, if they work properly, can play a significant role in reducing building energy consumption, and removing chemical contaminants, hence improving the well-being of occupants and building energy efficiency. There are, however a number of parameters that their impact on the performance of these systems for such applications have not been thoroughly investigated (ambient temperature, high relative humidity, high air flow rate, mixture of contaminant, etc.). Moreover, incomplete oxidation of target pollutants could result in the formation of CO and some organic by-products (i.e. formaldehyde) that are more hazardous to building occupants than the target pollutants. ***The proposed research work aims to solve all of the above-mentioned problems so as to make the PCO technology to be a mature and reliable option applied in an HVAC system in a changing world. Our investigation will extend to the contaminants of emerging concern not limited to traditional air pollutants. As more air cleaning devices designed for the removal of gas-phase air pollutants enter the market, it would be essential to develop a procedure to evaluate their performance and develop design tools. The long-term objective of this research is to carry out comprehensive research to minimize/eliminate the by-product generation of air cleaning systems, to improve their removal efficiency and energy efficiency, to develop an efficient technique for their regeneration, to develop design tools, and to develop universal evaluation standards. **