kitchen

A kitchen is one of the major moisture producing areas in a dwelling. In order to prevent condensation and mould growth the relative humidity should not be too high. This paper describes a set of experiments comparing methods of kitchen ventilation and their effectiveness at moisture removal. The three methods of extract ventilation were: 1. A mechanical extract fan of extract rate 60 l/s 2. A passive stack ventilation system 3.

A possible alternative to mechanical extract ventilation for kitchens and bathrooms is passive stack ventilation (PSV). BRE has carried out work on this type of system in a test house under controlled conditions. To find out how well they worked in practice, four occupied dwellings were monitored over a period of 2 - 3 weeks each. Each dwelling had two ventilation ducts. Air flow rates within the ventilation ducts were measured, together with humidities, temperatures and climatological data.

Kitchen hoods play an essential role in the ventilation of kitchens. This paper describes activities carried out at the Belgian Building Research Institute with respect tothe determination of kitchen hood efficiencies. The linkwith European standardization is also described.

The paper presents a criterion to assess the performance of mechanical exhaust hoods for dome stic kitchens and a procedure to experimentally test them; an analysis of the relevant parameters which affect their performance is made, the test results are shown, and finally these are compared with the results of a numerical fluid dynamic code. Experiments were performed using the tracer gas technique, and attention has been drawn rather on the hood efficiency in the removal of pollutants than on the IAQ in the test room.

The dour threshold value of kitchen exhaust air was experimentally determined during typical cooking situations and tobacco smoking in a dwelling. During cooking, air from the exhaust duct was taken into a sample bag. The dour threshold concentrations of the samples were determined by sensory evaluation using olfactometer and untrained dour panel. Experiments were made both in laboratory and field settings. The largest dour threshold concentration of 168 o.u./m³ was determined during the frying of herring.