Using portable air purifiers to reduce airborne transmission of infectious respiratory viruses – a computational fluid dynamics study

  1. Liwei Guo
  2. Ryo Torii
  3. Ruth Epstein
  4. John Rubin
  5. Jonathan P. Reid
  6. Haoran Li
  7. Andrea Ducci
  8. Ramanarayanan Balachandran
  9. Manish K. Tiwari
  10. Yiannis Ventikos
  11. Laurence B. Lovat

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Abstract

Aerosols and droplets generated from expiratory events play a critical role in the transmission of infectious respiratory viruses. Increasingly robust evidence has suggested the crucial role of fine aerosols in airborne transmission of respiratory diseases, which is now widely regarded as an important transmission path of COVID-19. In this report, we used CFD modelling to investigate the efficiency of using portable air purifiers containing HEPA filters to reduce airborne aerosols in hospitals and serve as a potential retrofit mitigation strategy. We used a consulting room to set up our simulations because currently the clearance time between consultations is the controlling factor that limits the patient turnover rate. The results suggest the inlet/suction of the air purifier unit should be lifted above the floor to achieve better clearance efficiency, with up to 40% improvement possible. If multiple air purifiers are used, the combined efficiency can increase to 62%. This work provides practical guidance on a mitigation strategy that can be easily implemented in an expedient, cost-effective and rapid manner, and paves the way for developing more science-informed strategies to mitigate the airborne transmission of respiratory infections in hospitals.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.01.21265775: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.01.21265775v1 on medRxiv