The influence of air motion on bacteria removal in negative pressure isolation rooms

To face infection in hospitals, the control of the concentration of bacteria in patient rooms is necessary. For that study, computation and experiment were carried out in a real hospital isolation room. CFD software was used to simulate steady and transient air motion. A fog generated by an ultrasonic nebulizer was used to put experimental bacteria into the patient room.. The effect of bacteria removal by means of colony counts was examined. Both computational and experimental results proved that the original design of the isolation room could not remove bacteria effectively. The authors rearranged the air inlet/outlet locations , new computations and experiments were done in order to find better designs.