Influence of air inlet diffuser layout on indoor air quality and occupant's thermal comfort in a room with baseboard heating system

In the recent years, the baseboard heating system has attracted the attention of many HVAC engineers due to its uniform temperature distribution and low feed water temperature. Despite this, lack of ventilation equipments in the buildings with the mentioned heating system, can cause to decrease the indoor air quality. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of fresh air supply diffuser layout on the indoor air quality and occupants’ thermal comfort conditions in a baseboard heated building in winter. For this reason, the thermal sensation and indoor air quality indices have been numerically investigated in a standard case room and under the climatic conditions of 0C as winter outdoor design temperature. The results show that the location of air supply diffuser has a significant influence on air temperature, thermal comfort conditions and indoor air quality. So that, changing the location of ceiling air diffuser from near the exterior wall to the center, can cause the average of air temperature to increase about 1.1C (from 21.4 to 22.5C). Moreover, the results indicate that selecting the proper location for fresh air supply diffuser can lead to increase in the indoor air quality improvement index from 0.44 to 0.67.