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Multi-zone measurement of particle concentrations in a HVAC building with massive printer emissions: influence of human occupation and particle transport indoors

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Abstract

Particle number (PN) and mass (PM) concentrations were measured in four offices in a HVAC building, one of them corresponding to a printer room. On-line monitoring of the indoor PM concentrations was accompanied with monitoring of the outdoor concentration. In addition, black carbon was measured in two of the selected offices. PN concentrations were measured with a variety of instruments (SMPS,NanoScan, P-Trak) covering a range between 10 nm and 9 μm, whereas PM10 mass concentrations were measured with several DustTraks. Cleaning activities and printing were identified as the most significant indoor sources for ultrafine particles with the latter resulting in a substantial increase of indoor PN<1 concentrations in the printer room during workdays. Moreover, indoor transport of fine particles from the printer room was found to have an important contribution to both indoor PN<1 and PM10 concentrations in two of the rest three offices. The physical presence of the occupants had an impact on particles >2.5 μm during workdays due to particle resuspension. However, when the offices were not occupied (night, weekend) the outdoor environment was a strong contribution to indoor concentrations. Lastly, black carbon preserved low concentrations in both under study offices and was not associated with printer emissions suggesting that black carbon is not an appropriate measure for assessing printer emissions.

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Acknowledgments

The present work was supported by the European Union 7th framework program HEXACOMM FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement N° 315760.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Instituttveien 18, 2007, Kjeller, Norway

    Sofia Eirini Chatoutsidou

  2. School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Polytechneioupolis, 73100, Chania, Greece

    Sofia Eirini Chatoutsidou, Norbert Serfozo, Thodoros Glytsos & Mihalis Lazaridis

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  1. Sofia Eirini Chatoutsidou
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Correspondence to Mihalis Lazaridis.

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ESM 1

Fig. 1S: Particle number size distribution (dN/dlogDp) of peak concentration in PR during cleaning of the corridor. Fig. 2S: Indoor particle number concentration in PR and outdoor particle number concentration as measured for 48 h on 10-11/10/2015. The office was closed and no activity took place during the measurement. Table 1S: Averaged total removal rate and suspended PN<0.1 concentration originating from other areas estimated for each workday. Table 2S: Parameters of linear regression between emission rates (S) and indoor PN<0.1 concentration for PR. Table 3S: Parameters of linear regression for mass concentration data for offices A1 and B2. Table 4S: Parameters of linear regression for number concentration between PR and A1, B1 and B2. (DOCX 16 kb)

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Chatoutsidou, S.E., Serfozo, N., Glytsos, T. et al. Multi-zone measurement of particle concentrations in a HVAC building with massive printer emissions: influence of human occupation and particle transport indoors. Air Qual Atmos Health 10, 679–693 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-017-0461-4

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