Mold is a type of fungus present in nearly all environments. Mold thrives under several environmental parameters such as high humidity and an adequate food source. A professional, such as an industrial hygienist, can measure mold in indoor and outdoor environments. Industrial hygienists commonly use a cascade impactor with a culture plate to capture air within a sampling area. While collecting air samples, environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide are recorded. A laboratory then cultures and analyzes the samples, identifying the types and amounts of viable mold found in the sampling area. In this study, a data analysis method is used to interpret lab results and compare those results to the environmental parameters measured during collection. The study aims to show the relationship between the environmental parameters (temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide) and the types and amounts of mold that were measured in both indoor built environments and their surrounding outdoor areas. Among all 170 different sampling locations, the outdoor areas had higher counts and concentrations of mold. In addition, both indoor and outdoor areas saw Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Cladosporium as the most prevalent molds, with Cladosporium having the highest counts. Lower temperatures and humidity had a very small influence on mold growth and thus, yielded the lowest counts. Furthermore, the highest concentrations of mold were found within the same temperature and humidity ranges for both indoor and outdoor environments.

1 ABSTRACT This diploma work investigates the influence of thermal insolation at residential buildings on the concentration of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in indoor environment. The studied area is a housing estate of panel buildings (flats) in Sezimovo Ústí city. The present work notices a positive impact of thermal insolation on energy demands of buildings and it is mainly saving consumed heat energy which is also connected with emission lowering of carbon dioxide emissions. The main problem which is soluted in the work is that total insolation is usually done without any ventilation solution. It means that it has later a negative impact on indoor environment/air quality in flats. The main part if this work presents measurements of indoor air quality - CO2 concentration, air change rate, temperature and relative humidity in an insolated (with plastic windows) and a non-insolated (with the original wooden windows) flats. The measurement lasted for three days in selected pairs of flats - with plastic and wooden windows. The measuremet took place in bedrooms because the behaviour of residents of households was very similar during their sleep. The air change rate was then caculated from CO2 concentration decay during period of 3 hours without residents. The main aim is to quantify these differences. The conclusion...

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The link between a good indoor climate and environmental impacts e.g. global warming and different pollution in the air is something that are important today and will certainly become more important in the future with increased energy prices and new laws. Too keep the indoor air quality within limits is it important to have a good and competitive ventilationsystem. The ventilations function is mainly to supply fresh air and to remove polluted air from the room. It’s important that the ventilation system works as it should so that the indoor air quality is as good as possible. The lack of good ventilation can create several symptoms such as headaches, nausea, fatigue, poor concentration etc. In Sweden are ventilation control mandatory for every newly produced building and this control are repetitive usually every 3-6 years for some types of buildings.   The foundation of this thesis is from a previous degree project performed by a master’s student in 2013 named Ander Barroeta with supervision of Magnus Mattsson and Taghi Karimipanah. The thesis was to improve and design a ventilation system in two rooms at a training facility named Friskis & Svettis in Gävle so that the CO2 level did not exceed 1000 ppm.   In this thesis was the main goal to do similar measurements as the previous thesis and compare the results to see what difference air balancing has done to the ventilation system. Field measurements were performed at the training facility were the focus was on carbon dioxide but also on other parameters such as temperature, humidity and air velocity so that air exchange rate could be calculated. With these parameters can evaluations be made to see if air balancing of the ventilation system made any difference in indoor air quality.       During measurements in one of the training rooms where spinning is exercised was carbon dioxide levels up to 3300 ppm measured which is above the recommended indoor limit at 1000 ppm. If that room should be design to not exceed 1000 ppm must the air exchange rate increase from 6.3 h-1 to 35.1 h-1.

Dans l’air intérieur, de nombreux composés organiques volatils sont présents, parmi lesquels le formaldéhyde, composé cancérogène. Sa présence dans l’air intérieur s’explique par son utilisation abondante dans les matériaux d’ameublement et de décoration. L’objectif est de concevoir un procédé d’épuration, propre, sûr et capable d’éliminer le formaldéhyde de l’air intérieur. Le choix s’est tourné vers un épurateur d’air autonome. Afin de protéger les utilisateurs, le dispositif doit piéger et dégrader complètement les polluants de l’air sans émettre de sous-produits. L’absorption a été choisie comme méthode de piégeage et la photocatalyse comme technique de dégradation. L’épurateur pilote couplant absorption et photocatalyse a été testé en laboratoire et un modèle a été construit pour prédire son efficacité à dégrader en continu le formaldéhyde. L’épurateur dimensionné pour une situation réelle se révèle avoir un encombrement réduit, compatible avec son installation dans un bureau / In indoor air, many volatile organic compounds are present, including formaldehyde. The presence of this carcinogenic compound in indoor air is due to its abundant use in furniture and decoration materials. The objective of this work is to design a purification device, clean, safe and capable of removing formaldehyde from indoor air. The choice turned to a stand-alone air purifier. To protect users, the device must trap and completely degrade air pollutants without emitting by-products. Absorption was chosen as trapping method and photocatalysis as degradation technique. The cleaner coupling absorption and photocatalysis has been tested in the laboratory and a model was built to predict its efficiency to continuously degrade formaldehyde. The purifier designed for a real situation appears to have a small volume. An efficient, compact, quiet and attractively designed device is an advantage for this air purification solution is accepted and adopted by users

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Estimating infiltration of quasi-ultrafine black carbon particles by an absorbance method: air quality in Pavla Stehlíková Abstract This diploma thesis focused on the estimating quasi-ultrafine particles amount in school gyms continue previous study researched air quality in schools. The size-segregated mass concentration of particulate matter was measured in three elementary school gyms in central part of Prague, on periphery of Prague and in a small settlement Černošice during twenty campaigns, from 2005 to 2009. The mass concentration of particulate matter were measured by 5-staged Sioutas impactor. For this thesis we have selected samples on filters with particle size <0,25µm. To evaluate carbonaceous particles amount we used reflectance. Reflectance was transformed into an absorption coefficient (m- 1 .10-5 ). The average levels of absorptions coeficients were higher outdoors (14,66 ± 8,93 m- 1 .10-5 ) than indoors (13,64 ± 8,08 m-1 .10-5 ). The correlations between absorption coeffitients outdoors and indoors were significant for all schools (Spearman's correlation coefficient at intervals 0,834-0,957, regression slope 0,759-1,007), suggesting a high outdoor-to-indoor penetration rate. The weak correlation between absorption coefficients and number of exercising pupils (correlation coefficient 0,059)...

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<p>The fluid simulation in computer generates realistic animations of fluids by solving Navier-Stokes equation. The methods of simulation are divided into two types. The grid-based methods and particle-based methods. The former one is wildly used for scientific computation because of its precision of simulation while the latter one is used in visual effects, games and other areas requiring real-time simulation because of the less computation time it has. </p> <p> </p><p>The indoor airflow simulations with HVAC system in construction design is one specific application in scientific computation and uses grid-based simulation as the general-purpose simulation does. This study addresses the problem that this kind of airflow simulations in construction design using grid-based methods are very time consuming and always need designers to do pretreatment of the building model, which takes time, money, and effort. On the other hand, the particle-based methods would have less computation time with an acceptable accuracy in indoor airflow simulations because this kind of simulation does not require very high precision.</p> <p><br></p><p>Then this study conducts a detailed and practical comparison of different fluid simulation algorithms in both grid-based methods and particle-based ones. This study's deliverable is a comparison between particle-based and grid-based methods in indoor airflow simulations with HVAC system.</p> <p><br></p><p>The overall methodology used to arrive at the deliverables of this study will need two parts of work. The benchmark data is gathered from a CFD software simulation using FVM with a decent grid resolution. The particle-based data will be generated by simulation algorithms over the same set of room and furniture models implemented by OpenGL and CUDA. After the benchmark FVM simulation being conducted in a CFD software, the temperature field of airflow will be measured. After simulation, the temperature field are gained on each one of 4 particle-based simulation. A comparison standard is set and data will be analyzed to get the conclusion. The result shows that in a short simulation time period, after finding a proper number of particles, the particle-based method will achieve acceptable accuracy of temperature and velocity field while using much less time.</p><p></p>

If released in significant amounts, products formed by reactions between ozone (O3) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) sorbed on activated carbon (AC) filters could degrade indoor air quality (IAQ). Heterogeneous reactions were investigated in laboratory experiments aimed at characterizing reaction products. Effluent air of AC loaded with limonene and exposed to O 3 (5.8 ppm) yielded unreacted limonene (501 ± 197 μg/m 3), low levels of 4-acetyl-1-methylcyclohexene (AMCH) (20 ± 2 μg/m3), and limonene oxides (25 ± 7 μg/m3). Most of the O3-limonene products remained on the AC, and most (58%) of the limonene remained unreacted on the AC after exposure to a stoichiometric excess of O3 for 48 h. Thus, in addition to known homogenous reactions, O3-limonene reactions occur heterogeneously on AC but to a much lesser extent. However, the fate of 95% of the depleted limonene was not determined; much of the missing portion was attributed to desorption from the AC, but the formation of other secondary indoor air pollutants is possible. VOC-loaded AC air filters exposed to O3 seem unlikely, however, to constitute a significant emission source of reaction products. More studies are necessary to investigate other pollutants, effects of environmental conditions, and VOC releases from AC that may be enhanced by O3 exposure.