Garage Ventilation System Design: CO

Removal with Jet Fan Placement

https://www.simscale.com/blog/2018/02/garage-ventilation-system-jet-fan/

written by

Anastasia Churazova

updated on

March 10th, 2020

approx reading time

5-Minute Read

BlogCAE HubGarage Ventilation System Design: CO Removal with Jet Fan Placement

An estimated 1,400 cars were reduced to burned-out shells on New Year’s Eve in King’s
Dock, Liverpool. Despite the development of sophisticated smoke and gas detection devices,
accidents like this happen on a regular basis, placing increasing importance on garage
ventilation system design.
Burned cars are clearly visible in what remains of the multi-story car park where a large fire
destroyed hundreds of cars in Liverpool, Britain on January 1, 2018 (Source)

If a fire breaks out, the garage ventilation system needs to successfully extract the smoke and
gas from the garage while ensuring a safe evacuation of any people in the building and, at the
same time, reducing the temperature and maintaining sufficient visibility to make the
firefighters’ job easier. Another equally important function is to maintain the fresh-air supply
and extract toxic gases from the garage space to prevent the formation of “dead zones,”
where harmful substances could accumulate.

This is the primary role of a garage ventilation system—affecting everyday user comfort,
health, and safety.

Carbon Monoxide Removal: Why is It Important?

While the requirements for garage ventilation system design are generally based on different
local standards, the system always needs to successfully perform two key tasks:

1. Remove the pollutants emitted by cars

2. In the event of a fire, it is crucial to control the hot fumes and gases produced by the
fire, protect the escape routes, and maintain ease of access for the emergency teams.

In an enclosed parking garage with an inadequate or ill-maintained ventilation system, the

fumes from the cars entering, exiting and driving through the facility could build up to toxic
levels. Traditional parking garage ventilation systems combine supply and exhaust fans with
ductwork to push fresh air in and pollutants, smoke and harmful emissions out. The major
task for them is to extract harmful exhaust gases from an underground car park, such as
Carbon monoxide (CO), Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and Sulphur oxides (SOx) which cause poor
air quality.
CO concentration poses the biggest threat, causing harmful side-effects and even death, even
in low quantities. It has no odor or color, but it can very quickly poison a person before they
even sense anything is wrong. CO poisoning is the most common type of fatal air poisoning.
If mechanical or natural ventilation is not sufficient in the enclosed environment, exhaust gas
concentration is hazardous to humans and can even lead to death.

What International Standards Say about Parking Garage Ventilation System Design

CO Level in
Standard and Regulation
Air
NIOSH – National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
200 ppm
Short-term exposure limit (15-minute maximum exposure level)
OSHA – Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The maximum allowable concentration for a worker’s continuous exposure in
50 ppm
any
eight-hour period
UMC – Uniform Mechanical Code
Recommends activation of the mechanical ventilation when CO is monitored
50 ppm
in a parking
structure
EPA – Environmental Protection Agency
35 ppm Recommends 35 ppm or lower as an ambient air quality goal averaged over
one hour
NIOSH – National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
PEL-TWA : 35 ppm is the maximum allowable concentration for a worker to
35 ppm
be
exposed to in any eight-hour period
ACGIH – American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists
TLV-TWA: 25 ppm is the maximum allowable concentration for a worker’s
25 ppm
continuous
exposure in any eight-hour period
IMC – International Mechanical Code
Recommends actuation of the mechanical ventilation when CO is monitored
25 ppm
in a
parking structure
EPA – Environmental Protection Agency
& ASHRAE – American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
9 ppm Conditioning Engineers
Recommends 9 ppm or lower as an ambient air quality goal averaged over
eight hours

ASHRAE highlights the emission of carbon monoxide as one of the most serious concerns
presented by car parking garages. For enclosed parking facilities, ANSI/ASHRAE Standard
62, “Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality,” recommends 9 ppm or lower as an
ambient air quality goal averaged over eight hours. Other engineering organizations set
similar requirements, with 9-35 PPM maximum CO concentration over an eight-hour
exposure period, and 100-200 PPM for short-term exposure.
Regardless of where the parking garage is located and the standards you follow, the
consensus is that maintaining air quality while satisfying safety requirements is a key
challenge for HVAC designers specializing in car park ventilation.

How Can CFD Help?

Finding the optimal location, number, and configuration of the exhaust fans required for
garage ventilation, while ensuring that it meets the tenability requirements of CO exposure
limit set by health and safety regulations, can be a challenging task. Computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) can simultaneously predict airflow, heat transfer and contaminant transport
inside the parking garage, guiding the engineer towards the right design decision.

To learn how to apply cloud-based CFD to test and optimize garage ventilation for the
removal of carbon monoxide and other pollutants, watch the recording of this webinar:

Watch Webinar Recording

Case Study: Reducing CO Concentration Levels in a

Garage with Jet Fan Placement
Although natural ventilation may be sufficient for open and semi-open parking lots,
channeled mechanical or jet fan ventilation systems should be used in underground and
closed parking garages in order to prevent excessive CO concentration levels. The jet fan
ventilation system is one of the most widely used ventilation systems for carbon monoxide
extraction in underground car parks. The aim of this study is to undertake CFD modeling of a
car park to simulate how the correct placement of a jet fan can help to reduce CO
concentrations without the need for a complex duct system.

For this case study, we will use a project from the SimScale Simulations Library—copy it for
free and use it for your own analysis: Pollutant Extraction from a Parking Garage. The aim of
this project is to evaluate ventilation performance in an underground car parking garage and
to verify that the jet fan ventilation system causes a sufficient reduction in CO concentration
levels.

Two garage ventilation system configurations are simulated:

1. Without jet fans (only supply and exhaust fans opening)

2. With jet fans
Underground Garage Ventilation System

CFD simulations are performed to examine velocity and CO concentration distribution for the
two scenarios using the simulation parameters below.

Simulation Parameters

The computational domain consists of a parking garage measuring 3.5 m in height and having
a total volume of 23642 m^2.

Boundary Conditions:

 Fresh Air Inlets [ 4 X 18000 CMH = 72000 CMH]

 Exhausts Opening [ 3 X 28800 CMH = 86400 CMH]
 Jet Fans
 Open Boundary (ramp for entry/exit)

CO Source Term Calculation:

Volume of underground parking garage (m^3) 23642

Total number of vehicles parked 200
% of moving cars (entering/exiting the garage in peak hours – worst case
40
scenario)
Total number of moving cars 80
CO emission rate per vehicle (mg/s) 8.1944
2.77E-
Total volumetric CO source (Kg/m^3-s)
08
CFD Simulation Results

CO Concentration in PPM at 1.8m Height

The simulation results visualize the CO concentration patterns for both garage ventilation
system designs, clearly revealing several large “dead zones” in the first configuration without
jet fans. The post-processing images below further highlight the regions with CO
concentration over 60 PPM in the first design, which have been eliminated with the help of
jet fan placement.

Regions with CO Concentration > 60 PPM

Velocity Contours at the Jet Fans’ Height

To put these results into numbers, incorporating jet fans into the garage ventilation system
can lower the maximum CO concentration by 55,1%! That is in addition to improving
air velocity and the overall air quality throughout the garage space.

Conclusions
The above case was just a simple example of how cloud-based CFD simulation can help
HVAC design engineers easily test any design change without leaving the web browser. The
simulation took only five hours of manual time and eight hours of computing time, allowing
us to virtually investigate the performance of a garage ventilation system and ensure the
adequate movement of air.

Until recently, only engineers with vast expertise in numerical analysis and a large budget
could fully benefit from CFD simulation tools. With the emergence of flexible cloud-based
solutions, however, it has become an industry standard. To see the SimScale platform in
action and learn more about setting up a typical pollutant removal simulation with cloud-
based CFD software, watch the webinar recording below:

Watch Webinar Recording

Piqued your interest? Discover the benefits of CFD for the AEC industry yourself by creating
a free account on the SimScale platform, no credit card required.

Community Plan 14-Day Professional Trial

References

 http://inteccontrols.com/whitepapers/CO_Parking_Garage_Design_Guidelines.pdf
 http://www.honeywellanalytics.com/~/media/honeywell-
analytics/documents/english/apn069_parkinggarage_web_1-8-15.pdf
 http://www.mobilecalibrationservices.com/Ventilation_for_enclosed_parking_garage
s.pdf