HVAC's Unseen Protectors

As the world deals with the Novel Coronavirus I was reminded of research that I was involved in some 35 years ago.  At that time I was directly engaged in modeling airflow and temperature profiles using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software for a major air distribution products company.

While we used CFD modeling for a wide variety of complex air distribution problems the case that came to my mind this week was modeling an infectious disease isolation room for the CDC.  The challenge was to design a negative pressure isolation room that also minimized exposure of a health care worker positioned directly adjacent to the patient bed. 

The specific type of infection to be studied at that time was tuberculosis (TB).  Much like the current coronavirus, TB is often spread by droplets when a patient coughs.  A healthcare worker standing next to the patient bed was almost certain to risk exposure if the room used conventional air distribution layouts and patterns.  The correlation with today's problem is obvious.

My current company, Mestex, has been using CFD analysis for 20 years.  Although our modeling efforts have not included the case mentioned above we can apply the same techniques to create accurate temperature and airflow models of data centers, pharmaceutical storage warehouses, chocolate or wine warehouses, eCommerce fulfillment centers, or virtually any temperature sensitive application.  Much like the goal of the CDC study of 35 years ago our objective is to use modeling to optimize our product applications without the expense of full scale mockups or, worse yet, finding out about a problem after the building is complete.

The HVAC industry is continuing to refine the modeling techniques that I used those many years ago in order to create even better solutions to healthcare worker protection.  In general, when we do our jobs correctly, the end user is not aware of what is involved.  After all, you cannot "see" temperature or air so our work is "invisible".  However, the HVAC industry has a vital role in helping protect people and critical products from many types of threats.