Particle-size distributions for an office aerosol

Technical Report · Mon Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1990

OSTI ID:5480055

Owen, M K; Ensor, D S; Hovis, L S; Tucker, W G; Sparks, L E

The article discusses an evaluation of the effect of percent outdoor air supplied and occupation level on the particle size distributions and mass concentrations for a typical office building. (NOTE: As attention has become focused on indoor air pollution control, it has become important to obtain basic information on the effects of heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system parameters on office aerosols. In addition, it is important to know the particle size distributions in a typical office environment.) The outdoor, return, and supply air streams, as well as hallway air, were sampled using measuring equipment covering particle diameters from < 0.1 to > 10.0 micrometers. The mass concentrations, when the building was occupied, increased by a factor of about 2 when all return air was used over all outdoor air. The concentrations when unoccupied using no outdoor air were as low or lower than were those when the building was occupied using all outdoor air. All of the occupied concentrations were < 200 micrometers/cu m. As expected, the outdoor air was cleaner than the other streams. The next lowest concentrations were for supply air, then return air, with hallway air showing the highest concentrations. The normalized number distributions had a single mode consistently near 0.13 micrometer; the volumetric distributions peaked at 0.3 micrometer.

• Research Organization: Research Triangle Inst., Durham, NC (United States)
• OSTI ID: 5480055
• Report Number(s): PB-91-177196/XAB; CNN: EPA-R-814169
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540120* -- Environment
Atmospheric-- Chemicals Monitoring &amp; Transport-- (1990-)
AEROSOLS
AIR POLLUTION
AIR POLLUTION CONTROL
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING
BUILDINGS
COLLOIDS
CONTROL
DISPERSIONS
DISTRIBUTION
ECOLOGICAL CONCENTRATION
ENGINEERING
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
INDOOR AIR POLLUTION
MASS DISTRIBUTION
OFFICE BUILDINGS
PARTICLE SIZE
POLLUTION
POLLUTION CONTROL
SIZE
SOLS
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION