Masters Theses

Keywords and Phrases

Air Exchange Rate; Indoor Air; Indoor Exposure To Air Pollutants; Survey; Tracer Gas Emitter; Window Opening Occurrence

Abstract

"Opening a window dramatically alters how we are exposed to air pollutants. Online questionnaire surveys were deployed to assess window-opening occurrence of the occupants of US homes. This information will be used to better quantify population exposure to pollutants of indoor and outdoor origin. Frequency distributions of demographics were generated which showed percentages of respondents who participated in the surveys from categories including gender, race, household income and occupancy. In April 2016, 49.3% of the people surveyed opened their windows for at least 1 hour in a day. This increased to 52.5% in September 2016 and reduced considerably to 24.4% in December 2016. 'Window hours' defined the behavioral patterns of each respondent with respect to window opening in different rooms of the home and for different time intervals. Respondents opened windows more often in the morning and afternoon. Respondents in the southwestern and northwestern regions of US opened windows more (approximately 74%) than the respondents from other US regions in surveys 1 & 2. For survey 3, northeastern region opened windows least (18.75%) as compared to other regions. These variations in percentage can be associated with the temperature and humidity differences, and the time of the year when the surveys were deployed. Another part of the study focused on field work to estimate the air exchange rate (AER) in a home under windows closed and windows open conditions, using tracer compounds (HFB & OFT). It was observed that, when all the windows were closed, the air exchange rate in the home was approximately 1.97 hr-1. When half a window was opened, the air exchange rate increased to 6.07 hr-1. But when another full window was opened, the AER increased to 1.47 hr-1"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Morrison, Glenn

Committee Member(s)

Fitch, Mark W.
Rezaei, Fateme

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Environmental Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Spring 2017

Pagination

ix, 94 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 88-93).

Rights

© 2017 Gauri Date

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 11083

Electronic OCLC #

992440369

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