A study on the control strategies to improve indoor air quality with outdoor air - demonstrated by a bathroom design.

Poor indoor air quality caused by poor ventilation was indicated from field measurements in apartments in Taiwan. Four strategies of employing thermal buoyancy effect, dedicated air flow pattern, transom and spatial connection control are proposed to improve indoor air quality by removing indoor pollutants with outdoor air. To prove the concepts, a bathroom design based on the proposed strategies is presented by numerical simulation using 11 computational fluid dynamics code. Instead of spreading the pollutant, humidity, throughout the whole apartment as an inevitable consequence of the traditional design, the strategies enable the pollutants to be removed effectively from the apartment. The humidity produced in the bathroom is first collected in the upper level by thermal buoyancy effect, then removed through higher outlet to the hallway, finally excavated through transom from the apartment.