Contamination Control in a Patient's Room

Overview

Breathing and coughing by a patient are mechanisms by which contaminants, in the form of bacteria or viruses, can be introduced into hospital patient rooms. These contaminants pose a threat to both the patient care givers and visitors, and need to be controlled by the ventilation systems. Therefore, the mechanisms need to be fully understood and represented correctly when numerical analysis of different patient room ventilation systems is made. In the case of breathing, a study was made to determine whether the breathing could be considered as a steady state or transient (time varying) event. This is important in that steady state analysis is more straightforward and time efficient in considering the different ventilation systems. In the case of coughing, which is a transient event, two different ventilation systems, namely, overhead (OV) and displacement (DV) are considered numerically for a typical patient room. In this case, the contaminant control for the two ventilation systems is also determined. Experimental data was used as the basis for the two mechanisms in both cases. The webinar will highlight the importance of the two mechanisms, the experimental data used and its conversion to numerical boundary conditions, and numerical case studies which consider the impact of the two mechanisms on the contaminant and flow fields in the room.

What You Will Learn

• Impact on contaminant and flow fields of breathing and coughing in patient room using CFD numerical analysis.
• Methodology to convert experimental data on breathing and coughing to numerical boundary conditions.
• Impact on contaminant and flow fields of alternate ventilation system designs in patient rooms.
• The use of FloVENT in the consideration of patient room ventilation system designs, and contaminant control applications.

Who Should View

• HVAC design engineers
• Health care facility design engineers
• HVAC research engineers or scientists

Related Industries

• Built Environments and HVAC
• Medical Systems