The rising stream around a human body attributable to metabolic heat can carry contaminants from the floor level to the human breathing system. Thus, the quality of the breathing air greatly depends on the concentration distribution in the lower part of the room and the characteristics of the local air motion around the body. In this paper, a modeled human body (computational thermal manikin) is placed in a room that is air-conditioned with a displacement ventilation system.

This paper describes the development of software for simulating the air-conditioning environment in a computer room. This software uses a finite volume method combined with a rectangular structured mesh system and a k-£ two-equation model for turbulence. Some special modeling techniques are also used. This software has two purposes: (1) to optimize the layout of a computer room, thus minimizing the electric power used for air conditioning, and (2) to reproduce the situation in which an accident is caused by an air-conditioning problem and to assist in an investigation of the problem.

The procedure of incorporating duct leakage into the T-method simulates leakage as an additional parallel section with zero length for each duct section. The assumption that additional air leakage creates additional system resistance is wrong. Leakage always reduces, not increases, system resistance. How fan power consumption changes due to leakage depends on the fan performance curve.  Methodology was developed to add duct leakage to the T-method previously developed for both the design and simulation of duct systems. It is shown that in most cases the sealing of ductwork is economical.

This paper considers the numerical modeling of room airflows and illustrates the usefulness of computational fluid dynamics as a design tool for ventilation systems. A computer code, which simulates steady, buoyant, turbulent, three-dimensional flows in Cartesian coordinates, was developed. The time-averaged equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy are solved. A low Reynolds number kE model is used to simulate the turbulent transport. The code was validated by comparing it to benchmark data for both liddriven and buoyancy-driven cavity flows.

The present Government has a target for reduction of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions of 20% of 1990 levels by the year 2010, which is in fact greater than the legal commitment set at the Kyoto summit on climate change in December 1997. Energy use in buildings accounts for approximately half of tl1e UK's annual carbon dioxide emissions and thus a reduction in the energy used in buildings is vital for this target to be achieved. A detailed knowledge of how energy is currently used is essential for assessing the potential for reducing the UK's C02 emissions.

This paper gives an account of a project to test the effectiveness of simple passive strategies to improve thermal comfort in Government Primary Schools in Pakistan .. Changes for improved thermal performance were carried out on five schools which were monitored both before and after modification. Schools are simple and minimally serviced. Improvements were controlled (as far as possible) to one strategy per classroom to make evaluation as straightforward as possible. An effectiveness score for a range of options has been developed.

This paper reports on the findings of a research exercise that has aimed to crystallise the current state of the Indoor Air Quality debate across a broad spectrum of the industry. The findings are discussed and conclusions drawn on whether there is evidence that the industry's efforts towards delivering good Indoor Air Quality is well received by building owners and operators in appreciable numbers

The large heat loss from Passive-stack ventilation (PSV) systems quite often makes natural ventilation systems unattractive and it is therefore desirable to implement heat recovery in PSV stacks. As the stackpressure is usually about a few Pascal, it is crucial that the heat recoveryunit used in a PSV system produces even lower pressure loss, which is extremely difficult to achieve with the conventional plate heat exchangers. This work is concerned with an a low pressure-loss heat recovery device based on heat pipes.