The effect of air conditioning systems on indoor air quality and the spread of airborne diseases

This study was carried out in the Mechanical Engineering Air Conditioning Laboratory of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of Bitlis Eren University. The blowing angle, velocity and temperature of the split type air conditioner in the laboratory were taken into consideration at certain intervals and the thermal comfort, draft and tracer gas concentration were investigated by the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. There is one wall-type split air conditioner, one table, one cabinet and an experimental setup in the office type room. While the wall-type air conditioner in the room was operating in three modes, the velocity values of the air coming out of the blowing nozzle were measured and the obtained data were used as reference data both in the experimental study and in the CFD analysis. In the three-dimensional numerical study, the flow was considered as continuous, incompressible and turbulent and Ansys Fluent 2023R2 was used as the software. Since the air in the room will undergo a displacement due to the density difference due to heating, the Bousinesq approach was taken as basis. The Realizable k-ε turbulence model based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS) was selected and the Scalable Wall Function was also selected from the wall functions as well. In the experimental study, thermal comfort indexes and gas concentration were obtained with sensors placed on the experimental setup and compared with the same data obtained by CFD analysis.