Our aim is to simulate and control how air flows when there is a mix of common air particles and aerosol particles including air pollutants indoors. The simulation models a room (with or without furniture depending on what the user chooses) either closed or with windows or doors open to aid with reopening different sectors as governments around the world ease COVID-19 lockdown measures.
We looked at how air particles spread around in a closed environment in MATLAB, this can be transferred to a web page where users from around the world can add different furniture and change the room, which hopefully gives them an idea of how office rooms can be changed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, like adding vents or air conditioners to control airflow. Not only can the user choose the room layout, they can also change the air particles' and pollutants' densities, masses, and velocities.
Compared to outdoor air pollution, indoors is more relevant in our current contexts since the COVID-19 outbreak as indoor environments do not allow much airflow. We are using MATLAB, then the code will be uploaded to a public website so the public can freely model their indoors environment. We worked on equations that would simulate the movements of particles depending on their sizes, densities, and velocities. The way they interact with each other based on whether they are a normal particle or an aerosol particle, how they interact with furniture in the room, how they are moved by a ventilation system are all factors we looked at.
We used this resource: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/pathfinders/covid-19/environmental-impacts to examine different types of aerosols, e.g. nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone.
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https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/pathfinders/covid-19/environmental-impacts
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/78638/E90038.pdf