Optimizing Ventilation Strategy for Enhanced Airborne Disease Control in the Intensive Care Unit

Humans have been struggling with various infectious diseases that can spread through the air. Plague, SARS, smallpox, and influenza epidemics are a few examples of serious concerns. At the end of 2019, a new acute respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus started the COVID-19 global pandemic. Recent studies have emphasized the importance of breathing and talking in the spread of airborne diseases. In this study, the chance of cross-infection in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a hospital was studied numerically under different air distribution system strategies. We assumed 1 μm droplets, which carry viruses, were released from the patient’s mouth during speaking and breathing. The simulated environment was a segment of a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) with two nurses and two patients. Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches were used to simulate droplet movement using ANSYS-FLUENT software. The study examined two ventilation strategies, all operating at a similar ventilation rate of 12 ACH but distinguished by different inlet and outlet configurations. The purpose of the study was to understand the distribution of particles in this environment at 300-second intervals. Validation of the computational model included a comparative analysis of simulated velocity flows over a single heated humanoid manikin’s head with the experimental data. The results showed that having a downward vertical inlet airflow and air exhaust register at the top of the patient bed has the most effective droplet removal strategy.