Numerical Analysis of Age of Air and Suspended Particle Distribution in Ventilated Operating Room

Abstract

This paper evaluates the indoor-air contamination caused by surgical smoke in the operating room and verifies the improvement caused by installing hanging walls suspended from the ceiling. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed to analyze the gas contaminant in the operating room with and without the installation of hanging walls suspended from the ceiling. The analysis showed how the downward air-conditioned flow blown from the ceiling surface and the upward flow caused by the hot surgical smoke interacted to form a complex flow field. Due to the close proximity of the source of smoke to the breathing zone, there
was a steep gradient in the concentration of particles near the operating field.