A convenient method to assess air infiltration rate using particle mass balance principle

Abstract

Uncontrolled air leakage across a building exterior (i.e., air infiltration) is a primary reason for excessive energy consumption of air conditioning systems and indoor particle pollution, because infiltration brings outdoor high dew point air and particulate pollutants indoors. Therefore, assessing air infiltration rate is very necessary for improving building energy performance and indoor air quality. However, the commonly used method to assess infiltration rate is very complex to implement. In this paper, we propose a convenient method to assess the infiltration rate based on the mass balance of particulate matters. Given the ubiquity of particulate matters in the outdoor environment and being cost-free, this method is able to avoid the disadvantages of traditional methods. PM2.5 is chosen to establish the mass balance. The method was used in an office room to measure the infiltration rate. Simultaneously, the carbon dioxide tracer gas method was used to verify our method. The relative error between the results calculated by our method and the verifying method is within 10%, which indicates that the proposed method would be feasible in practical applications.