Classrooms

Indoor air quality in schools is of critical importance for the health and well-being of pupils and staff. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the essential role that ventilation systems play in limiting the spread of airborne diseases and consumer CO2 monitors were deployed in UK classrooms as a cost-effective tool to help manage the ventilation supply. In such settings, which are occupied for long periods by the same group of people, CO2 measurements have also been used to infer the risk of far-field airborne infection.

The occupants’ satisfaction with the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of a building is a key factor to determine if the indoor climate can be considered as acceptable. Current standards, evaluating the IEQ, do not always guarantee sufficiently high occupant satisfaction levels, since these standards do not handle all satisfaction influencing parameters, such as, personal preferences or perceived control. Therefore, the assessment of occupant satisfaction with the IEQ remains an important issue.

Indoor air quality (IAQ) control in educative centres, where students spend most of their time, is essential. The presence of high levels of contaminants can impact the academic performance of the students and, ultimately, their health. A study has been carried out to assess the IAQ of higher education classrooms with natural ventilation in order to quantify the exposure of the occupants to certain contaminants during the cold season. CO2, PM10, PM2.5, PM1.0, and volatile organic compounds (VOC) have been measured.

Investigation of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in various types of buildings is a rather intense research activity by recent years. IEQ refers to the acceptable levels of thermal, visual and acoustic comfort in addition to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). In the proposed work, a systematic measurement campaign in university classrooms in the Educational School of the University of Western Macedonia, Florina, Greece, is presented; the campaign was performed by the end of the spring semester, in free-running classrooms.

The discomfort prediction inside buildings by means of correlations able to estimate people subjective response from indoor conditions has been widely investigated with the purpose of supporting design, commissioning and operation of buildings. Technical standards have been developed based on these findings, suggesting or prescribing acceptability ranges for the different environmental quantities involved mainly in single comfort aspects.

This paper reports preliminary analysis from a large field study of 100 university classrooms in Central Texas. Lecture classrooms and auditoriums were sampled for three consecutive weekdays in the 2019 – 2020 academic year. Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, used as a marker for both ventilation and exposure, and temperature were measured in the general room area and when able, the supply airstream. HVAC control data that relates to ventilation was also saved for comparison.

The environmental conditions experienced in UK schools not only influence the effectiveness of teaching and learning but also affect energy consumption and occupant behaviour plays a critical role in determining such conditions.

Beijing is in the Cold Climate Zone of China. This study carries out a long-term survey of indoor environmental parameters, the clothing of occupants, and the metabolic rate of occupants as well as people’s voting of their sensation in classrooms in Beijing. The study was conducted in 2011 and 2012, trying to explore people’s requirement of indoor thermal environment. Relationships between thermal parameters and people’s sensations are found. The acceptable temperature range can meet the requirements of most of users.

In this work the evaluation of indoor air quality in a classroom equipped with cross-flow ventilation is presented. A numerical methodology, based on comparison with experimental data, used in the evaluation of the air exchange rate, airflow rate and the age of the air, was applied in the first phase of this work. The evolution of carbon dioxide inside spaces, with different airflow typologies, was then predicted in the second part. The study was based on a school located in the South of Portugal. In the experimental methodology the tracer gas decay method was applied.

Recently, studies have shown that the classroom environment is very important for students' health and performance. Thus, the evaluation of indoor air quality (IAQ) in a classroom is necessary to ensure students' well-being. In this paper the emphasis is on airborne concentration of particulate matter (PM) in adult education rooms. The mass concentration of PM10 particulates was measured in two classrooms under different ventilation methods in the University of Reading, UK, during the winter period of 2008.