An uninvited speech not presented at the MONTIE workshop at Taastrup. My diary of November 24-25, by Dr. Hans Martin, SenseAir AB

Transcription

1 An uninvited speech not presented at the MONTIE workshop at Taastrup or My diary of November 24-25, 2005 by Dr. Hans Martin, SenseAir AB During the MONTIE workshop days in Taastrup, Denmark, November 24-25, I promised the participants to share my diary in the form of our joint CO 2 level exposures that I constantly monitored during the meeting days. Well, I crossed my fingers as I said it, because I hadn t checked the logger configuration before I left my office but why is it often so that the worst thing that could happen always seems to come true? Every experimentalist is aware of Murphy s law ( If anything can go wrong, it will! Back home I discovered t that I had my logger set for maximum sample speed, which only gives room for the latest 2 hours to be saved in the rotating memory, far from the 6 days recording memory I usually work with!! No excuse, just an explanation to why I cannot illustrate my diary the way I hoped to do! So, I feel that I need to write down, instead, my thoughts about what we experienced together during our meeting days, and here they are: My senses I have this peculiarity of mine to always carry my portable CO 2 monitor with me whereever I go. A mental defect obtained from my work? Sure, but I don t want to be without it! It is like my born human senses have been expanded with one more the ability to sense CO 2. This is a big sensation - you should try it! It gives me in my daily life information that I don t want to miss, experiences that I have, which I might remember and bring with me in my future life. Just like some beautiful view is worth remembering, or a certain taste, smell, or sound suddenly perceived might recall something you have experienced in the past, just like that I have found that a CO 2 experience could trigger my mind in the very same way! Well... not quite like that, but close! To start with, during my flight SK403 in a MD81/82 jet, I got intrigued about what I saw. From the time of boarding, and still on the ground, the CO 2 levels increased quickly in the cabin to above 2000 ppm. This level remained unchanged until reaching the final altitude, ~10000 m, when increased fresh air supply made the CO 2 level decrease down to the hygienic standard level of about 1000 ppm. However, as soon as the preparations started for landing at Kastrup Airport the CO 2 levels once again climbed up to the 2000 ppm level. These are interesting observations for anyone with the ambition to understand what is going on. Has it to do with how the cabin pressures are regulated in the airplane cabin? I don t know. If so, how come that when I went back home with SK410 the next day, in the same type of airplane, the CO 2 content levelled out at ~2500 ppm and stayed the same during the whole flight! How come? Does the pilot have a manual fresh air control button that he presses whenever he feels for it, or what? A diary of workshop events -edited.doc 1 of 5

2 Seeing the invisible Occasionally, the constant awareness of the ever-changing CO 2 levels surrounding me makes me see and understand the basic mechanisms of air movement, of ventilation and indoor air quality. Well, I have to admit that inside the airplane cabin I failed completely, but otherwise I often get these WOW kind of experiences... Why didn t I think of this, or that, before it was so obvious! Nature is so natural, so logical and very simple, really, if you just have the tools to see it! Most issues discussed in the IAQ workshop are so well known today, and yet we don t connect what we preach in our academic world to what we do and experience in our own everyday life! It is like we think that we are the experts, so we are standing above the laws of physics they don t apply to us. Almost without exception, I commonly find extremely bad ventilation in the offices of leading ventilation companies! Why is that? With bad I mean that it is either really very unhealthy, underventilated (...I would like to put some hot company names here, but in the name of peace I must control myself ), or it is heavily over-ventilated resulting in excess operation costs and contradicting the energy savings directives and official green polices of the company I currently am visiting! Without making too much of a fuss about it, the Danish Technological Institute in Taastrup was found too to be no exception. During both workshop days The CO 2 steady state level in the conference room reached only about 540 ppm. This elevation of ~150 ppm from the outside air indicates that with an occupancy of 40 people in this hall there was a 3-4 times unnecessary high air exchange rate during our meeting. Energy waste by excess ventilation This air experience of mine was happening at the very same time as Mads Mysen from the Norwegian Building Research Institute How to conveniently carry the portable CO 2 sensor when logging your daily personal CO 2 exposure. was presenting us with his calculations on how much energy we would save if we used DCV (demand controlled ventilation) instead of CAV (constant airflow ventilation). In his school example it was about 50% savings potential, but in the room where we were gathered, my sensor told me that the facility manager could have saved ~70% of the actual ventilation energy consumption! As an exercise; let s do a simple energy calculation for our meeting, with the input conditions of 10 hours meeting time ( let us be nice and assume that the ventilation was switched off when we were not there), 7 l/s/person target ventilation, 15 o C air heating from the outside air with a moisture content of 0 o C dew point (water content ~4 g/kg air it was snowing), and an air mixing ratio efficiency factor of 0.5. The result then becomes that the excess ventilation during the meeting was kg dry air kg water Energy waste ~ 328 kwhr A diary of workshop events -edited.doc 2 of 5

3 Under ventilation and slaughtering pits With my CO 2 sensor I constantly get reminded about what I actually already know, but for some reason tend to forget, if it where not for my CO 2 sensor. Eureka I get it! one more time. We all know better when we take our time to reflect, such as in the conference room, but clearly we don t do that in our daily life. That s where this extra sensor plays the important role of complementing our born senses to remind us at all times! Like what we experienced together in the restaurant Mama Ludba on Thursday evening, for instance, while we had a very good time, the CO 2 levels raised to over 3600 ppm (!), synchronously with the sound level increase to over 90dB(?). The restaurant was constructed in about the same way as modern slaughterhouses for pigs are constructed; that is a one-stair-down pit and no fresh air ventilation at all, assuring that the heavy CO 2 gas gets layered and trapped at the bottom of the pit. Death enters smoothly! In addition, smoking is allowed in Danish restaurants. Don t get me wrong! We all really enjoyed the dinner, and the time spent together, very much! But the situation became quite comic, indeed. There we were gathered, the most distinguished experts in Europe in the field of Indoor Air Quality, forced to sit for 4 hours and breath this dense Danish atmosphere, inhaling the most unhealthy air one possibly could find in the city of Copenhagen! The walk afterwards along Vestebrogade to the Hotel Du Nord was indeed a necessary refreshment ( by the way I checked at that time the outdoor CO 2 sensor reading which went down to 390 ppm thus confirming that there was nothing wrong with the sensor calibration!). A vote for IAQ declarations we inhale more than we eat! Professor Bjarne Olesen from Technical University of Denmark reminded us earlier that afternoon that we eat an amount of 1kg every day, and drink 2 kg. For health reasons food must clearly declare its detailed chemical contents on the wrapping, whereas we inhale about 15 kg of air into our lungs every day, air that we haven t got a clue about what the contents are! This indeed is astonishing! Why do we without any hesitation accept this situation? I claim that we don t have to! While waiting for the healthy building codes to become effective, and before all old public spaces are modernised with well functioning ventilation systems, we at least could make visible to the consumers of air, what is the current IAQ status at the different facilities! For sure, that would be a shock to many people, just to become aware of the poor conditions they live in. That, in turn, would exert pressure on the different facility owners to quickly do something about it. A good IAQ environment would for sure become a competitive market parameter! Michelin will put pressure? For instance, if the restaurant Mama Ludba had to have its IAQ declaration available, on a sticker clearly visible on the outside window next to the credit card announcement, and on their web advertisement page, then the workshop organisers would have the option to choose in advance another restaurant, that in addition to the excellent food could offer the full optimal experience of excellent food AND fresh healthy air! By the way, that would be a good input for the Michelin Restaurant Guide to improve their gourmet value by an added IAQ rating! To me it is clear that with such a mandatory IAQ declaration, the competition to win customers would accelerate the speed of development in society towards much more healthy indoor environments. Experts agree that less illness among the general population will result from investments in better IAQ, as we then don t share our viruses and diseases at the same rate. In addition, the result would be the creation of more jobs A diary of workshop events -edited.doc 3 of 5

4 in the IAQ and construction sector, which is good for business, reduced unemployment, giving more earnings and less social expenses overall. Crystal clear to me! Personal ventilation and the bird s flu Someone must be able to put adequate numbers on the potential EURO earnings possible from a national economics point of view, simply from the effect of introducing a mandatory IAQ declaration for public spaces. We heard Arsen Melikovs speech about the calculations made by their group at the Technical University of Denmark (ICIEE) on how the spread of bacteria and viruses in a working place was reduced drastically by introducing the concept of personal ventilation. Correctly implemented, the probability of being infected during an 8 hours working day by any of the assumed 30 colleagues was close to null, even by the most aggressive viruses. Very impressive indeed! Theoretically, that would prevent any pandemic flu to occur in the first place. Correct? Well, of course not quite true. I remember my observation at Copenhagen Airport after entering the cabin of the train IC941 to Taastrup Höje from Track 4. I happened to sit down where smoking was allowed, and I didn t mind at first, because this quite big cabin was almost empty. However, in spite of only 5 occupants present, the CO 2 level locked to 2500 ppm! Are smokers not entitled to stay alive? The cabin was completely sealed by the additional automatic slide doors that separate this compartment from the rest of the train. I couldn t find any trace of fresh air at all. If the general IAQ standard stays like this for those poor people using the train to travel to and from their place of work, then I don t think it is worth spending any money at all on the office ventilation system. Everyone will get the bird s flu, or whatever, during the time of transportation anyway! I have to be fair to the DSB train company by also reporting our observations from the second day, when we travelled during the morning rush hour from Track 12 with a newer, red train. Even though this train was crowded with people, the monitor did not display higher CO 2 levels than 1000 ppm, indicating quite good fresh air ventilation Back home - end of journey November 25, 2005 Bus CO2 (ppm) SJ speed train X Temperature ( o C) CO2 Temp Hudiksvall Delsbo :45:00 21:15:00 21:45:00 22:15: Data logging from my last two transports before reaching Delsbo, my home village. The train and the subsequent bus were both not fully occupied. A diary of workshop events -edited.doc 4 of 5

5 the monitor with you during meetings, a lot of discussions related to IAQ will pop up automatically. If you are interested in the offer send us a sensor request by to info@senseair.se with the note MONTIE, Nov.25 and we will send you the monitor kit together with an invoice. I encourage you all to do so, because seeing is believing, and it is infectious! Better off, I will even give the sensor away for free to any one of you that promises to use it on a daily basis, and prove it by publish your recordings on your web page once a week for a year! This would be an innovative format of a personal blog which could become in the future an interesting reference material for researchers in the History of Technological Advances for Controlling Indoor Environment! Product information can be downloaded at Special offer I got a bit surprised from my findings from the workshop that even the people actively engaged in IAQ research and ventilation technology didn t seem to have much of an experience personally in monitoring CO 2. I find it hard myself to convince my surroundings about the existence of IAQ problems without having close access to any simple CO 2 monitoring equipment. For the Good Cause I therefore want to help with an offer, in the case that anyone who attended the workshop in Taastrup has become interested in exploring his/her own IAQ environment: Concluding remarks I enjoyed the two days in Taastrup very much, and I believe I speak for the majority. It was a good, relaxed and constructive atmosphere among the participants, who represented quite a wide range of disciplines within the IAQ and sensor community coming from 10 different countries. The organizers made a good job, I believe, with the selection of topics presented by the invited speakers, as well as with all practical arrangements. SenseAir would like to offer all participants a one-time special offer of 150 EURO (~half price) for our portable CO 2 + temperature monitor with built-in data logger. This is a great tool to i.e. convince facility managers, financiers, politicians and decision makers to take appropriate actions on IAQ issues. Simply by bringing A diary of workshop events -edited.doc 5 of 5