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Full-scale Experimental Set-up for Evaluating the Performance of Commercial Air Cleaners for Building Applications Arash Bastani A Thesis in The Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Applied Science at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada August 2008 © Arash Bastani, 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-45332-2 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-45332-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. •*• Canada ABSTRACT Full-scale Experimental Set-up for Evaluating the Performance of Commercial Air Cleaners for Building Applications Arash Bastani Improving the indoor air quality (IAQ) is considered an important issue in building science. Applying gaseous air cleaning devices to purify the air is an effective way to reduce the levels of gaseous contaminants and have a positive influence on IAQ. However, there is a lack of an acceptable approach to study the performance of these devices for non-industrial buildings. In this study, a methodology was developed to evaluate the removal performance of gaseous filters. A full-scale experimental apparatus was set up and a series of experiments were carried out to calibrate the system. These tests quantitatively validated the reliability of experimental set-up. Furthermore, it was applied to study the performance of four sorptive filters; a coconut shell-based and a coal-based virgin granular activated carbon (GAC), an impregnated GAC and a blend of virgin GAC and impregnated activated alumina. These filters were ranked based on their effectiveness for removing toluene. The test showed that the virgin GACs had better performance in removing toluene. The 50% breakthrough time of bituminous coal based virgin GAC was 40% and 50% higher than the impregnated GAC and the mixed GAC with activated alumina, respectively. Also, the results indicated that the coconut shell-based GAC has a better removal performance than the coal-based one. iii On the other hand, the resistance of these filters against desorption was characterized by measuring their retentivity. For cross-comparison of the retentivity among the tested filters, a novel analysis method was developed. The coconut shell based GAC showed the strongest resistance against desorption. IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Fariborz Haghighat, for his continuous motivation, inspiration and support throughout my study. I am grateful for the invaluable advices, both technical and personal, which he gave me over these years. I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. Chang-Seo Lee for her knowledgeable advices, valuable discussions and great cooperation in experiments. This dissertation owes an enormous intellectual debt to her, as most of the ideas in this research have been developed from long discussions with her. Also, my sincere appreciation is given to Mr. Christopher Flaherty, Dr. Kwang-Wook Park and Ms. Kourtney Brooks for their constructive suggestions and help. I am also grateful for the financial support by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Dectron Internationale, Inc. through a CRD grant (CRDPJ 312743-04). I would like to appreciate my colleagues in our research group, Parham Mirzaei, Golnoush Bolourani, Yashar Farajollahi, Laurent Magnier, Reza Mostofi, Liang Zhou and Jian Zhang for stimulating exchange of idea and creating a supportive atmosphere. I would like to extend my gratitude to my best friends, Hamid Kholafaei, Farivar Moayeri and Parinaz Pakniat for their unconditional support and love. The last but the most, I wish to express my warmest appreciation and love to my wonderful parents, Masoomeh and Pirooz, my kindhearted sister, Parastoo and my trustworthy brother and friend, Kaveh, for their continuous inspiration and support. I am indebted to their unconditional love and encouragement. v TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF FIGURES VIII LIST OF TABLES XI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS XII LIST OF SYMBOLS XIII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND 1 1.2 OBJECTIVES 6 1.3 THESIS OUTLINE 7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 8 2.1 INTRODUCTION 8 2.2 POROUS MATERIAL 9 2.3 SURFACE ADSORPTION PROCESS 12 2.3.1 Adsorption 12 2.3.2 Adsorption Isotherm 13 2.4 SORPTION MEDIUM 16 2.5 ASSESSMENT METHODS FOR GASEOUS-FILTER REMOVAL PERFORMANCE 20 CHAPTER 3 EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND SYSTEM QUALIFICATION 33 3.1 INTRODUCTION 33 3.2 TEST RIG 34 3.2.1 Test Apparatus Description 34 3.2.2 Measuring Flow Rate 38 3.2.3 Contaminant Generation System 40 3.2.4 Gas Sampling and Analyzing 41 3.2.5 Instruments 41 3.3 PRE-QUALIFICATION TEST 43 3.3.1 Test Duct Leakage 43 3.3.2 Gas Analyzer Calibration 46 VI 3.3.3 Velocity Uniformity Test 48 3.3.4 Upstream Contaminant Dispersal Uniformity 52 3.3.5 Downstream Mixing of Contaminant 57 3.3.6 No Filter Test 64 CHAPTER 4 DEVELOPED EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY 65 4.1 INTRODUCTION 65 4.2 CHEMICAL AGENT AND REMOVAL MATERIALS 66 4.2.1 Chemical Agent Selection 66 4.2.2 Removal Media 67 4.3 EXPERIMENTAL TEST METHOD 70 4.3.1 Phase 1: Pressure Drop Analysis 70 4.3.2 Phase 2: Adsorption Efficiency and Capacity Measurement 72 4.3.3 Phase 3: Desorption and Retentivity Determination 76 CHAPTER 5 FILTER RANKING TEST RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 80 5.1 INTRODUCTION 80 5.2 PRESSURE DROP ANALYSIS 81 5.3 METHOD QUALITY CONTROL 83 5.3.1 Adsorption Test Repeatability 83 5.3.2 Test Conditions Stability 85 5.3.3 Ranking Test Results 88 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK 95 6.1 CONCLUSIONS 95 6.2 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK 99 REFERENCES 101 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2- 1 Mass transfer stages in porous material 11 Figure 2- 2 Brunauer's classification of adsorption isotherms (from Hines et al. 1993) 14 Figure 2- 3 Structure of (a) graphite (b) turbostratic carbon (Noll et al. 1992) 17 Figure 2- 4 SEM photograph of activated carbon 18 Figure 2- 5 V-shape fashion of refillable or disposable modules (ASHRAE 2007-a)... 20 Figure 2- 6 Gas concentration profile inside the bed and mass transfer zone (from Noll etal. 1992) 22 Figure 2- 7 General schematic diagram of small-scale setup (ASHRAE 145.1 2007-b)27 Figure 2- 8 Schematic diagram of the laboratory-scale closed-loop setup 29 Figure 2- 9 General full-scale schematic diagram (from VanOsdell 2006) 30 Figure 3- 1 Test apparatus schematic diagram 37 Figure 3- 2 ASME long-radius flow nozzle schematic diagram (ASHRAE 1999) 39 Figure 3- 3 Contaminant generation system 40 Figure 3-4 Test duct leakage determination (a) system contamination (b) decay concentration monitoring 44 Figure 3- 5 SF6 concentration decay inside the duct 45 Figure 3- 6 Multi-gas detector calibration setup 46 Figure 3- 7 Toluene calibration curve of gas-analyzer 48 Figure 3- 8 Grid to measure the velocity 49 Figure 3- 9 Toluene concentration range at each measuring point at 0.2 m3/s [500 cfm] flow rate (first test) 54 Figure 3- 10 Mean average concentration (ppm) at each measuring point at 0.2 m3/s [500 cfm] flow rate (first test) 54 Figure 3-11 Toluene concentration range at each measuring point at 0.2 m /s [500 cfin] flow rate (second test) 55 Figure 3- 12 Mean average concentration (ppm) at each measuring point at 0.2 m3/s [500 cfm] flow rate (second test) 55 viii Figure 3- 13 Toluene concentration range at each measuring point at 0.9 m /s [2000 cfm] flow rate (first test) 56 Figure 3-14 Mean average concentration (ppm) in each measuring point at 0.9 m /s [2000 cfm] flow rate (first test) 56 Figure 3-15 Toluene concentration range at each measuring point at 0.9 m3/s [2000 cfm] flow rate (second test) 57 Figure 3-16 Mean average concentration (ppm) in each measuring point at 0.9 m3/s [2000 cfm] flow rate (second test) 57 Figure 3-17 Injection