Energy savings and exposure to VOCs of different household sizes with a smart ventilation system

Assessment methods to assess smart ventilation, in most countries focus only on comfort as criteria for the indoor air quality (IAQ), (Guyot et al., 2019). This is an issue as in doing so, pollutants that are known to cause harm to the human health are not taken into consideration while the exposure to VOCs will be elevated if the smart ventilation system lowers the ventilation flowrates to save energy (De Jonge and Laverge, 2021).

Economics of Indoor Air Quality

Buildings represent a major end use of energy throughout the world and are typically the dominant sector for electricity.   The use of that energy is to provide buildings services, the most important of which is Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).  Heating and air conditioning systems typically handle the thermal comfort aspects of IEQ; the energy impacts and economics of such systems is well studied.  The most important remaining aspect of IEQ is Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).