The present thesis aims to study the effect of human movements on local exhaust ventilation. In its simplest terms, local exhaust ventilation is a system which has the function of extracting contaminated air situated close to the contaminant source, protecting a working person from exposure to hazardous substances by containing or capturing them locally, at the emission point. As an important security measure referred to terms of health, it is crucial for the healthiness of workers to control and prevent them from the exposure to vapour, mist, dust or other airborne contaminants. Additionally, to a lesser degree of significance, it can be stressed an expected increase in worker performance due to an improvement of the working conditions. There is an existing necessity for well-defined and appropriate methods to test the performance of local exhaust devices in order to reach standard efficiency values. The lack of an international standardization led to the realization of this study, which, ultimately, has the purpose of obtaining relevant results that can be utilized for future normalized test procedures. The study entails full scale experimental measurements that include air velocity measurements in 3 dimensions, a local exhaust ventilation device with circular hood and a flat flanged plate and a controlled generation of air turbulence through physical movements of a human-sized cylinder, simulating a walking person. The present study extends previous similar studies at the University of Gävle, where the controlled air turbulence was generated by a moving plate. After meaningful results obtained in that study, one of the considerations was to better simulate a walking person, by replacing the plate for a movable cylinder. The present study points at a larger similarity occurring with a cylinder than with a plate, as regards the air flow pattern produced by a real walking person. As in the previous study, the Percentage of Negative Velocities, PNV, has been used as the main measure of turbulence induced risk of contaminant spread. The PNV represents the fraction of the time when the flow is directed opposite to the suction air stream in front of the local exhaust hood. The obtained results conclude that the use of the cylinder as a moving object has been an improvement to simulate the effect of the movement of a human being on a relaxed walking pace. The present study was carried out in parallel with the thesis work by Leyre Catalán Ros, which complements this study by analyzing the effect of an added heated dummy, simulating a person seated in front of the local exhaust device.

Local exhaust (LE) ventilation is a ventilation technique where contaminated air is locally extracted close to the contaminant source usually with the purpose to reduce the exposure of workers to dust, fumes or vapour, which can be hazardous to their health. The performance of a LE installation depends however on many influential factors, and there is not yet an international standardized way to test LE constructions. The present study is the natural continuation of some previous studies at the University of Gävle that aimed at contributing to the establishment of such tests. The study entails full scale experimental measurements that include 3-D air velocity measurements and tracer gas tests in a controlled air turbulence environment generated through physical movements of a vertical, human-sized cylinder. These measurements were focused on human exposure, which was analysed by means of a seated human simulator for different configurations in which the exhaust flow rate, turbulence level, the exhaust hood arrangement and the measuring/injecting distance varied. The use of a sonic 3-D anemometer, that yielded both magnitude and direction of the air movement, proved very useful in analysing the generated air turbulence. As a measure of the LE performance, PNV value (Percentage of Negative Velocities) was used. This measure represents the percentage of time when the air flow at the measuring point in front of the exhaust hood is directed away from the nozzle, i.e. when the velocity component in the direction towards the exhaust hood opening is negative. Regarding the results obtained, in an otherwise undisturbed environment, measurement data showed that the natural convection from the human simulator sitting in front of the LE introduces some disturbances of the air flow in the suction region, proportional to the exhaust flow rate. However, when additional turbulence was generated through the controlled movements of the human-sized cylinder, thus creating a controlled turbulence setting, natural human convection leaded to a lower percentage of negative velocities (PNV) in comparison with the case in which human simulator was not present, especially for low exhaust air flow rates and when the exhaust hood was raised from the table. The tracer gas tests implied injection of a neutrally buoyant tracer gas through a perforated sphere placed in front of the exhaust hood. The amount of tracer gas that escaped from the suction flow was measured both in the room air and in the breathing zone. The first measurements yielded a sensitive method for measuring the capture efficiency (CE) of the exhaust hood. The CE is the percentage of injected tracer gas that is directly captured by the exhaust hood. This parameter showed that although the  convection flow generated by the human simulator leads to low PNV values, it seems that the tracer gas is not actually being captured, but trapped in that convection flow. As a consequence, PNV and CE get a strong correlation, which is even more intense when injection and capture point are closer together. Hence, PNV represents a good alternative to tracer gas measurements only if the relationship between the correlation of PNV and CE with respect to the distance from the injection to the capture point is known. Finally, measurements of tracer gas in the breathing zone showed random, short and high exposures when turbulence was generated and those exposures got worse by natural human convection.

No description available.

The objective of this study was to determine whether improvements could be made to increase the capture distance of traditional local exhaust ventilation (LEV) hoods by designing a circular slotted-hood. The criterion of success for this study was to achieve increases in capture velocity at an upstream distance equal to the diameter of the hood (11 inches). By increasing capture velocity further from the face, contaminant capture could take place at distances more convenient to the circular slotted-hood operator while maintaining adequate suction. This was to be achieved by the addition of two slots and a flange to a traditional conical hood opening. Three plates were designed to change the geometry of a plain conical hood (slot area: 0.1334, 0.0963 and 0.0694 ft2). They were tested at different airflow rates (243, 347, 467, 647, 897 cubic feet per minute) for a set number of distances from the hood face using a thermal anemometer. Three-dimensional maps of performance were created for visual comparisons, and t-tests were conducted to analyze performance by comparison of velocity at any point upstream of the hood. Velocity contours illustrated that two of the three designs had greater capture velocities compared to the standalone conical hood, and paired t-tests confirmed the significance (p<0.05). Each of the new designs failed to significantly increase capture distance further than 11 inches from the hood. However, increased velocities occurred near the hood opening (within 5 inches). These modest improvements for the largest slot design increases operating pressures by approximately 0.1" wg @ 250 cfm but 1.1" wg @ 650 cfm. Implementing these new designs would increase capture velocities close to the hood, although this advantage is offset by the cost it would require to compensate for the pressure loss incurred.