While the use of heat energy has decreased since the middle of the 1970's the use of electricity in the Swedish stock of commercial buildings has increased dramatically. In the average Swedish office building, roughly 30 % of all electricity is used for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning WAC). Another 30 % is used for lighting, 20 % for office machines, and about 20 % for other loads. In order to study the use of electricity in Swedish office buildings in detail, the Swedish Council for Building Research initiated four monitoring and bddiing simulation projects in 1989.

Tracer gases are commonly used to evaluate the performance of ventilation systems. One way to reduce the time, complexity, and cost of such experiments is to use the carbon dioxide generated by occupants as a tracer gas. In this paper, a method for using the carbon dioxide generated by occupants as a tracer gas for determining the effective supply air flow rate to a zone or the relative air-change effectiveness of a zone is described. The approach is to make use of a model of the accumulation dynamics and a model of the way that occupants generate carbon dioxide.

Existing experimental techniques for calculating air flow through building cracks are usually based upon relationships derived from experimental studies employing relatively simple procedures. Typically, a fixed pressure difference, dP, is established across the crack of interest and then the air flow Q through the crack is determined. Most crack flow equations take the pressure differential dP to be steady-state. In reality, the wind forces which generate much of the driving pressures represent highly fluctuating signals.

This paper reports on the use of BRE's domestic ventilation model, BREVENT, to predict subfloor and whole house ventilation rates in a BRE/DoE test house. Before the model could be used though some minor adjustments were necessary because one of its underlying assumptions was that the subfloor temperature was equal to the external temperature. Temperatures measurements over a number of months showed this assumption to be false and so an extra stack term was introduced into the model. However, the overall difference this makes is still quite small, only a few percent at most.

The common way to determine air infiltration, exfiltration and interzonal flows from tracer gas measurements in multizoned buildings is to rely upon the standard single or multizone model, Vc(t) = Qc(t)+p(t) . Here c, p are zonal tracer concentrations and injections, t is time and V, Q are the sought volumes and flows. This model may work well provided that all zones are sufficiently well mixed and all flows really are constant during the measurements. The latter can be doubtful in naturally ventilated buildings, especially as the measurements may require several hours.

The first part of the paper will show some aspects of experimental research on air distribution in ventilated rooms. The study has been carried out to get an understanding of the air movement and the ventilation effectiveness by means of tracer gas measurements. It has been investigated the velocity and the distribution of the concentration in a two-dimensional isothermal flow issue of a linear supply opening. The second part of the paper will describe a proposed zonal model in 9 zones.

The work presented in this paper is aimed at the definition of tracer gas experimental procedures for measuring the air change rate, the age of air and the air change efficiency in real buildings under mechanical ventilation conditions. The measurement procedures, based on the decay method, were validated in a special experimental chamber and implemented in two rooms of a building under real operating conditions. Measurements of volumetric flow rate through the air ducts of two buildings, performed by means of the constant emission rate method, will be shown and commented.

The use of local exhaust is considered to be the most effective way to control pollutant dispersion from intense sources, such as in kitchens, in toilets, as well as in copy machine rooms. The optimum air exhaust rate required to prevent pollutants from escaping into the major occupant areas very much depends on the natural air exchange rate(AER) between the hooded room and the major room space. This paper presents a mathematical model and a test procedure of using tracer gas technique to quantify the AER.

The homogeneous emission passive tracer gas technique is described. This technique relies on an even distribution of constant tracer gas emission rate within the object to be measured, so that the emission rate per volume unit is constant. The local steady state concentration of the tracer gas is directly proportional to the local mean age of air and the emission rate per volume unit.

Full scale measurements of air flow velocities, temperature, intensity of turbulence and air exchange rate are carried out on two rooms with different types of ventilation located in the department of architecture at Chalmers University of Technology. The measurements have shown that mixed ventilation gives variable mean flow velocities with a high risk of draught as compared to the room provided with displacement ventilation. Air exchange rate for the room with displacement ventilation is obtained from tracer gas monitor by employing decay and constant emission methods.