Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Funds Research of Human Impact on Indoor Climate
Human impact on the indoor climate is being mapped for the first time in a large-scale test at DTU.
Over five weeks, researchers will examine human impact on the indoor climate by measuring the substances and chemical emissions that humans emit. The test will be performed with advanced instruments that have previously been used for measurements of the atmospheric climate and registration of climate change.
“We’ve not previously been able to measure with such great precision the chemical processes that occur in the indoor climate. But new advanced equipment and new analysis methods enable us to map how emissions from humans affect the indoor climate. This is knowledge which is becoming increasingly important because we spend 90 per cent of our time in buildings, and because our dwellings are today so well insulated and airtight,” says Gabriel Bekö, Associate Professor at DTU Civil Engineering.
The project ‘Indoor chemical human emissions and reactivity’ (ICHEAR) will be carried out in climate chambers at DTU Civil Engineering. The project is a unique collaboration between chemists and civil engineers, and involves sophisticated analytical systems from the German Max Planck Institute for Chemistry—MPI-C—and the Swedish Environmental Research Institute, IVL.
Associate Professor Pawel Wargocki at DTU Civil Engineering—who is one of the four primary researchers behind the test—points out that there will always be human emissions in the indoor climate even though pollution from other sources is removed...