A Pilot Study of the Effectiveness of Indoor Plants for Removal of Volatile Organic Compounds in Indoor Air in a Seven-Story Office Building
The Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Incubator Park (PBC) is a 7 story, 50,400 ft{sup 2} office building located near Nehru Place in New Delhi India. The occupancy of the building at full normal operations is about 500 people. The building management philosophy embodies innovation in energy efficiency while providing full service and a comfortable, safe, healthy environment to the occupants. Provision of excellent Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is an expressed goal of the facility, and the management has gone to great lengths to achieve it. This is particularly challenging in New Delhi, where ambient urban pollution levels rank among the worst on the planet. The approach to provide good IAQ in the building includes a range of technical elements: air washing and filtration of ventilation intake air from rooftop air handler, the use of an enclosed rooftop greenhouse with a high density of potted plants as a bio-filtration system, dedicated secondary HVAC/air handling units on each floor with re-circulating high efficiency filtration and UVC treatment of the heat exchanger coils, additional potted plants for bio-filtration on each floor, and a final exhaust via the restrooms located at each floor. The conditioned building exhaust air is passed through an energy recovery wheel and chemisorbent cartridge, transferring some heat to the incoming air to increase the HVAC energy efficiency. The management uses 'green' cleaning products exclusively in the building. Flooring is a combination of stone, tile and 'zero VOC' carpeting. Wood trim and finish appears to be primarily of solid sawn materials, with very little evidence of composite wood products. Furniture is likewise in large proportion constructed from solid wood materials. The overall impression is that of a very clean and well-kept facility. Surfaces are polished to a high sheen, probably with wax products. There was an odor of urinal cake in the restrooms. Smoking is not allowed in the building. The plants used in the rooftop greenhouse and on the floors were made up of a number of species selected for the following functions: daytime metabolic carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) absorption, nighttime metabolic CO{sub 2} absorption, and volatile organic compound (VOC) and inorganic gas absorption/removal for air cleaning. The building contains a reported 910 indoor plants. Daytime metabolic species reported by the PBC include Areca Palm, Oxycardium, Rubber Plant, and Ficus alii totaling 188 plants (21%). The single nighttime metabolic species is the Sansevieria with a total of 28 plants (3%). The 'air cleaning' plant species reported by the PBC include the Money Plant, Aglaonema, Dracaena Warneckii, Bamboo Palm, and Raphis Palm with a total of 694 plants (76%). The plants in the greenhouse (Areca Palm, Rubber Plant, Ficus alii, Bamboo Palm, and Raphis Palm) numbering 161 (18%) of those in the building are grown hydroponically, with the room air blown by fan across the plant root zones. The plants on the building floors are grown in pots and are located on floors 1-6. We conducted a one-day monitoring session in the PBC on January 1, 2010. The date of the study was based on availability of the measurement equipment that the researchers had shipped from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the U.S.A. The study date was not optimal because a large proportion of the regular building occupants were not present being New Year's Day. An estimated 40 people were present in the building all day during January 1. This being said, the building systems were in normal operations, including the air handlers and other HVAC components. The study was focused primarily on measurements in the Greenhouse and 3rd and 5th floor environments as well as rooftop outdoors. Measurements included a set of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and aldehydes, with a more limited set of observations of indoor and outdoor particulate and carbon dioxide concentrations. Continuous measurements of Temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH) were made selected indoor and outdoor locations.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Environmental Energy Technologies Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 983222
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-3368E; TRN: US201014%%590
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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