Indoor/Outdoor Air Exchange - Balancing Energy, Building Comfort & Health Issues

Session 12, Paper 2, CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium- Dublin, Ireland 2014, 3-4 April 2014

The recently developed urban areas of the GCC region are in essence twenty-four hour seven-day a week air conditioned indoor environments. In air conditioned buildings both ‘unplanned’ building envelope infiltration or exfiltration and ‘planned’ rates of fresh air ventilation have one thing in common: they are both forms of outdoor air ultimately being exchanged and conditioned to be the air that we breathe indoors.
In these100% artificial environments, the volume of outdoor / indoor air exchange recommended as A/C re-fresh rates and the volume of outdoor / indoor air exchange allowed by building permeability codes and lastly the quality of outdoor air measured by respirable particulates and micro-organisms that becomes the constantly re-circulated conditioned indoor air we breathe form a relationship critical to human health.