Healthy Energy-efficient Urban Home Ventilation

The primary goal of the project "Healthy Energy-efficient Urban Home Ventilation" is to establish knowledge and recommendations on robust ventilation strategies for urban apartments by enlarging energy recovery potentials, enabling power load peak shaving and a better indoor environment. Knowledge on load profile, exposure to health related cooking pollutants, moisture and building physics as basis for recommended ventilation strategies for healthy urban homes. The project will be solved through the use of literature and statistics studies, laboratory experiments, full scale experiments, numerical modeling. WP1 deals with the identification and mapping of typical urban home designs and their user profiles. Work package 2 will, with world-leading technology, conduct parametric lab studies of traditional and recirculating kitchen-ventilation solutions. Work package 3 deals with full scale experiments on moisture problems in different user scenarios and numerical modeling. Work package 4 deals with evaluations and recommendations from work packages 1, 2 and 3, and must include risk, sustainability and energy evaluation. Healthy Energy-efficient Urban Home Ventilation is funded by the research program EnergiX, The Research Counsil of Norway. The partners in the project are: Røros Metall AS, BSH Husholdningsapparater AS, Miele A/S, Engebretsen AS, Mestergruppen Bolig AS, Obos BBL, Selvaag Bolig ASA, Flexit AS, OsloMet- Storbyuniversitetet, Universitetet i Oslo, VKE ? Foreningen for ventilasjon, kulde og energi, Boligprodusentenes forening, Høgskolen i Innlandet, Norges Astma- og allergiforbund, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet ? DTU, Rutgers ? The State University of New Jersey, Norges Miljø- og Biovitenskapelige Universitet (NMBU), Direktoratet for byggekvalitet (DiBK), Studentsamskipnaden i Ås, Folkehelseinstituttet samt Erichsen & Horgen. The project has organized 3 workshops on Urban Ventialtion togheter with AIVC in May 2020. In 2021, field measurements have been carried out in a number of apartments, as well as laboratory experiments for exposure during cooking using standard kitchenhoods. User habits and typical examples of apartments have been studied. Read more at www.sintef.no/projectweb/healthy-energy-efficient-urban-home-ventilation/

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To achieve sustainability goals, creating neighbourhoods with low energy demand and high quality of life is a priority for Europe. Building dwellings that are efficient in terms of energy, space and material use close to traffic hubs is an important contribution to these goals. These dwellings need ventilation solutions that can efficiently remove contaminants from various sources with minimal energy demand. User activities like cooking are becoming increasingly important contaminant sources with higher user density and more focus on low-emitting building materials. Too high ventilation rates can reduce indoor moisture below recommended levels and represent unnecessary energy use. Extract range hoods that periodically are removing large volumes of air is a technical challenge for the ventilation system, as replacing the extract air directly from the outdoor is often undesirable due to external temperature or air quality. Exhaust ducts from range hoods takes up valuable space in high- and medium-rise buildings, and accumulated grease in ducts can be a fire-risk. These result in new challenges for and increased focus on ventilation systems that can provide healthy, silent and energy efficient solutions to a vital rest and recreation area for the residents. The primary goal of the project is to establish knowledge and recommendations on robust ventilation strategies for urban apartments by enlarging energy recovery potentials, enabling power load peak shaving and a better indoor environment. Future urban homes need updated knowledge and recommendations for ventilation strategies, to enable development of innovative concepts, predictable product development and documentation towards healthy ventilation and indoor climate. This project aims to bring forward new knowledge on load profile, exposure to health related cooking pollutants, moisture and building physics as basis for recommended ventilation strategies for healthy urban homes.