Airius managing director John Brodie explains why indoor air quality isn’t just about removing pollutants such as mould or viruses in the internal environment.
It is also about sound, smell, odours and heat stressors such as overheating or under-heating.
Indoor air quality can be defined by a range of criteria. Wikipedia says it is a term that refers to the air quality within and around buildings and structures, especially as it relates to the health and comfort of building occupants.
IAQ can be affected by gases (including carbon monoxide, radon, volatile organic compounds), particulates, microbial contaminants (mould, bacteria) or any mass or energy stressor that can induce adverse health conditions.
All these components can add up to creating an optimised internal environment as opposed to a poor quality internal environment.
With regards to overheating in summer, the use of air movement in the internal environment has been used throughout history as
a cooling mechanism.
Before mechanical air conditioning, fans and passive air movement options such as windcatchers, thermal labyrinths and building façade designs to encourage air flow for cooling were commonplace.
With the advent of air conditioning, the use of air circulation and destratification in both winter and summer has fallen by the wayside as the lure of expensive re frigerant chilled and heated spaces for little effort but high energy consumption levels has become a standard building outcome.
Little thought is now put into the low-energy and low-tech initiatives that have been used for hundreds of years.
Thermal comfort criteria that are based on air conditioned spaces and arguably flawed thermal comfort research now drive the design parameters for air conditioned buildings.
The US Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) believes poor internal air quality is a crucial problem in buildings and the relationship to user health and wellbeing as well as employee productivity is strong and well researched.
Over 25 per cent of the EPA website is dedicated to IAQ, yet here in Australia IAQ certainly hasn’t reached the same level of interest.
Yet IAQ is a key component of any sustainable building design and the Green Building Council of Australia pays significant attention to the implementation of a high level of IAQ in buildings.
Unfortunately, the mandating of IAQ performance in buildings is yet to occur in Australia under the National Construction Code (NCC).
The situation is very different in countries such as the UK, where all schools must achieve a certain level of maximum or minimum temperatures.
Nonetheless the adoption of an improved IAQ standard in all commercial buildings in Australia is not too far off as we move to a more sustainable building fleet.
The Airius Air Pear thermal equaliser and air circulation turbine fan can have a significant effect on both cooling and heating outcomes in any type of building.
Combined with its unique air purification system known as the photo hydroionisation (PHI) cell, which fits seamlessly into the fans as an option, the Airius Air Pear unit can offer significant and measurable improvements in IAQ as well as energy consumption.
A large printing factory in Sydney implemented a range of Airius Air Pear units to keep both the employees and printing machines cool over the hottest temperatures of 42°C inside the facility.
Large spaces that cannot afford air conditioning yet require air movement for cooling can benefit greatly from the comparatively low cost, simple, non-structural installation, controlled directional air flow and ultra-low power consumption of the Airius Air Pear units.
Also, the use of destratification and air circulation in conditioned spaces, while common in heating environments, is now being shown to reduce energy use of the HVAC system across some of Australia’s hottest locales and largest retail stores.
The use of air circulation in conditioned spaces removes hot and cold spots and ensures all areas have the same internal temperature, significantly improving the IAQ for the inhabitants of the building on top of the documented energy savings of 12 to 25 per cent.
Moving air is quite simple and easy if you have no horsepower limits. If you put enough horsepower behind a fan you could blow Australia to New Zealand!
The key to air movement is to move air over long distances with little amounts of energy and that is achieved by removing turbulence and using patented stator and venturi technology.
If you could implement non-turbulent targeted air circulation in either a conditioned or non-conditioned space – as opposed to normal fans that use large amounts of energy to move air turbulently across the face of the fan in all directions – with the ability to remove viruses, bacteria, VOCs, odours and mould from the internal environment, then all areas of IAQ can be satisfied in a single product.
If the air purification system doesn’t require servicing, has no filters to change and is effective for 25,000 hours, the value equation is certainly maximised.
Airius Air Pears are currently used to significantly reduce HVAC loads and improve thermal comfort in any conditioned space including retail, offices, schools, libraries, warehouses, indoor pools, cold storage, manufacturing and warehouses, hospitals and aged care.
The PHI unit, when added to the Air Pear, will clean all the air and the surfaces in the space removing 99 per cent of moulds, viruses.
Visit www.airius.com.au