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Record W4415712749 · doi:10.1016/j.jobe.2025.114513

A heat-driven disinfection technology for enhancing indoor air quality in HVAC systems

2025· article· en· W4415712749 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Building Engineering · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicSolar Energy Systems and Technologies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Alberta
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaAlberta InnovatesUniversity of Alberta
KeywordsHVACASHRAE 90.1Pressure dropAir conditioningAirflowIndoor air qualityDuct (anatomy)Filtration (mathematics)Air filtration

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) filters are traditionally deployed to control airborne pathogens. However, filters may accumulate microbes over time and become breeding grounds for pathogens. Any disturbance may release some of these microorganisms into the environment. This study proposes a novel, energy-efficient air disinfection approach employing recirculating warm air sequentially within two side-by-side enclosures to inactivate microorganisms captured in HVAC filters. An experimental setup assesses the impacts of warm inlet temperature and air recirculation rate within the disinfection units on the heat transfer performance of the system. Furthermore, a closed-loop aerosol wind tunnel accommodating the technology prototype has been constructed per ASHRAE 52.2 to evaluate the filtration efficiency and pressure drop at various duct airflow rates. The test filter has a Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) of 11. The test filter reached 65 °C in about 3 minutes under optimal conditions and was maintained at or above this temperature for 10 minutes to meet literature-based thermal inactivation criteria. The total energy consumption per disinfection cycle was 0.11 kWh. During normal operation, the system maintained filtration efficiency equivalent to that of a standalone filter, with a negligible increase in pressure drop. In disinfection mode, the submicron particle removal efficiency decreased, while large-particle removal increased, and the pressure drop rose significantly (140 Pa at 2000 m 3 /h), but only during a short period (13 minutes), resulting in a minimal impact on the overall HVAC fan energy use. This study provides practical insights for HVAC system designers and facility managers on integrating energy-efficient disinfection technology into buildings to improve indoor air quality. • A novel HVAC filter disinfection system uses insulated warm air recirculation. • System performance tested in a closed-loop wind tunnel based on ASHRAE 52.2. • The technology achieved the thermal disinfection with high energy efficiency. • The proposed system does not affect filtration efficiency in normal operation. • Pressure drop increased and filtration performance changed during disinfection mode.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.387
Threshold uncertainty score0.615

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.007
GPT teacher head0.249
Teacher spread0.242 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it