Experimental investigation of reduced-mixing personal ventilation jets

Abstract This paper presents an investigation of the design and performance characteristics of personalized ventilation (PV) systems that, in combination with general ventilation, deliver high quality air to the breathing zone (BZ) with no more clean air supply than indicated by ANSI/ASHRAE 62.1-2004, while satisfying acceptable ergonomic and aesthetic considerations. Under these conditions, the energy used for conditioning the clean air will not exceed that of a conventional ventilation system. We introduce a novel PV nozzle that achieves high BZ air quality with a small fraction of the clean air indicated by the ANSI/ASHRAE Standard. Tracer gas experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate the advantages of the novel nozzle relative to conventional PV nozzles. The results show that, at a PV clean air supply of only 2.4 l/s, the new nozzle achieves a BZ ventilation effectiveness close to 7 versus less than 2 for a conventional nozzle delivering the same amount of clean air. A companion paper presents a computational analysis of the same concept, validated against the experimental results of the present paper.