Mechanical Ventilation

Ventilation is required for both HVAC comfort and good air quality. Without enough ventilation, users will eventually experience comfort issues and even health problems. These could range from worker fatigue to experiencing Sick Building Syndrome in a commercial space. Experts have also recommended increasing ventilation to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by diluting virus particles. Ventilation is about adding the proper amount of fresh air from the outside to the indoor air space. Mechanical ventilation uses ducts and fans to draw in and distribute fresh air throughout a space, and sometimes to exhaust air from specific areas. Mechanical ventilation is beneficial not only for energy efficiency, but to provide more control over the amount of outdoor air added, as well as its source. To accomplish this level of control and efficiency, mechanical ventilation requires data to determine what vents to open or close, and what direction to move the air. Two newer techniques that utilize mechanical ventilation techniques include variable air volume, or VAV, and energy recovery ventilation, or ERV. Both utilize an array of sensors to ensure proper levels of airflow and the accurate temperature and humidity control. Board mount differential pressure sensors are crucial to monitoring and maintaining proper airflow for each zone and to ensure that system filters are not blocked. Duct mount and averaging temperature sensors are used to help monitor and control temperatures in each zone. Additionally, monitoring the humidity between zones and the outdoors can help maintain an ideal indoor humidity around 30 to 50%. This range is comfortable for people, while being high enough to reduce the rate of infection for viruses such as influenza and low enough to reduce the growth of microorganisms. To monitor both temperature and humidity, TE Connectivity (TE) manufactures the HTU series of sensors which provides accuracies of ±2%RH for humidity and ±0.2°C for temperature.