The ASHRAE Madison Chapter hosted Engineering Week 2023 at the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County in Madison, Wisconsin. This event featured engineers and ASHRAE members from the area to display and engage students ages 10-16 in engineering and HVAC. Integrated Environment Solution’s Vice President of IESVE Sales North America East, Matthew Duffy demonstrated indoor air quality (IAQ) and building simulation to the children.
Matthew and ASHRAE member Katie Jakober guided the children to create Corsi-Rosenthal (CR) boxes with MERV 13 filtration to show how engineering can be used to help communities improve IAQ.
Cities in the Midwest have a history of redlining, and Madison is no exception. The location of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County was formerly a redlined area and depleted of resources: a food desert, difficult transportation, and home to predatory loaning companies. The community sits downwind of an urban quarry and a busy highway to yield much particulate matter in the air to what is mostly low-income housing.
Through years of thoughtful community programs and funding, the streets now have speed bumps to slow down traffic and make more pedestrian friendly. There are community gardens and food trucks dedicated to fresh, local food, and there are beautiful murals to express the rich culture of the community, and the Boys & Girls club provides activities, education, and recreation including a large climbing wall!
However, the air quality and airborne infectious disease transmission is still an issue in a not-quite-post pandemic world. An empowering solution for IAQ is a Corsi-Rosenthal box. A CR box is one of the most cost effective air filtration solutions that efficiently filters particles as low as 0.3 microns. Thus, both droplet and aerosol particles that may carry infectious disease can effectively be filtered by this device. In places where ventilation is low, particulate matter is high, or public places where people are not wearing masks or respirators, a CR box can help increase the quality of the indoor air, and thus, the quality of life for the occupants.
With the analytical modeling IESVE, different levels of filtration, filter pressure drop, and filter soiling/replacement can be modeled in IESVE’s ApacheHVAC application. For more information, join a free online live IESVE web demonstration.