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Environment
Indoor and Built Environment
2020, Vol. 29(9) 1195–1201

HVAC systems for environmental ! The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1420326X20951968
COVID-19 infection journals.sagepub.com/home/ibe

Junwei Ding1, Chuck Wah Yu2 and Shi-Jie Cao3,4

Abstract
The outbreak of pneumonia caused by 2019 Novel Coronavirus arises significant concern for virus
transmission and control. The control of the indoor environment or public-enclosed environment is
crucial to reduce the risk of infection. Heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are used
to create a healthy, thermal-comfort indoor environments. Thus, the rational use of HVAC systems is of
great importance for the environmental control to reduce infection risk and to improve human wellbeing
in the pandemic. In order to satisfy the requirement of better healthy environment and more thermal
comfort performance of indoor ventilation system, prevention of indoor pollution is essential, especially
considering the purpose of disease transmission resistance. This paper investigated the collective con-
tagion events in enclosed spaces as well as engineering control against virus spread with ventilation
systems for health-care facilities and public vehicles. Future challenges of HVAC design and control
were discussed.

Keywords
COVID-19, Ventilation, HVAC, Indoor environment, Control
Accepted: 23 July 2020

The recent outbreak of pneumonia caused by 2019
Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) raises serious social
concern. People infected with COVID-19 (SARS-
COV-2) coronavirus could suffer severe respiratory
illness which is similar to severe acute respiratory syn-
drome (SARS-COV-1) coronavirus, and in most severe
cases, high mortality has been reported. Up to 22 July
2020 (17:00 GMT), more than 200 (exactly 216) coun-
tries, areas or territories have been registering infection
cases of COVID-19 illustrating the severity of the
world-wide pandemic. The number of infections and
deaths is still rising (over 15.2 million confirmed cases
and 622 thousand confirmed deaths).1 As the most
direct and fundamental method to control the spread
of the coronavirus in the pandemic, medical treatment
(in severe cases) and social isolation are essential.
Equivalent efforts should be made to prevent healthy
people from being infected by the virus. Physical isola-
tion such as the isolation treatment for patients,2 social
distancing and lockdown for cities have been enforced
with some success.3 However, with the gradual resump-
tion of normal life, work and production, there would
be people visiting public facilities and services (e.g.
shops, supermarkets, offices, hospitals, restaurants
and pubs), posing a potential risk to another
1
Academy of Building Energy Efficiency, School of Civil
Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China
2
International Society of the Built Environment (ISBE), Milton
Keynes, UK
3
School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
4
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering and Physical Sciences, Global Centre for Clean Air
Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK
Corresponding author:
Shi-Jie Cao, School of Architecture, Southeast University,
2 Sipailou, Nanjing 210096, China.
Email: shijie_cao@seu.edu.cn
1196
undesirable rise in the outbreak of infection cases and
the associated sick building syndrome that could arise
due to the use of disinfectants in buildings.4 The con-
trol of the indoor environment is crucial to reduce the
risk of infection in these environments. Heating, venti-
lation, air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are used to
create a healthy, thermal-comfort indoor environ-
ments.5 Thus, the rational use of HVAC systems is of
great importance for the environmental control to
reduce infection risk and to improve human wellbeing
in the pandemic.
Collective contagion events in
enclosed spaces
As is shown in Figure 1, the transmission of virus usu-
ally consists of three main routes, namely contact
transmission, droplet transmission and aerosol trans-
mission.6 Table 1 lists three typical transmission inci-
dents related to transmission in enclosed and highly
occupied spaces.
The airborne transmission of droplet carrier of virus
should be a major consideration.10 These virus-containing
droplet nuclei and particulate matters can travel over a
great distance carried by the airflow or buoyancy effects.
Exposure to these droplet particles within indoor spaces
would provide a major route of infection of people to the
virus.2 The guidelines from the WHO11,12 are to well ven-
tilate the indoor spaces as well as keeping important per-
sonal hygiene practices such as regular washing of hands,
wearing of face masks (or covering), disinfecting all
touched surfaces, etc. Thus, ventilation control should
meet the requirement of reducing the infection risk partic-
ularly in enclosed spaces such as homes, health-care facil-
ities, offices, shopping centres, public vehicles, etc. There
should be a review of the national standards to ensure that
the ventilation facilities including HVAC are adequate
and efficient for the purpose.
Figure 1. Possible transmission pathways of COVID-19.6
Indoor and Built Environment 29(9)
Engineering control against virus
spread with ventilation systems for
health-care facilities and public
vehicles
Conventional ventilation systems are designed to dilute
indoor-contaminated air through intruding fresh air
from the outside, maintaining indoor air quality and
thermal comfort at a satisfactory level.13 There are two
categories of ventilation systems according to different
driving forces: natural ventilation systems and mechan-
ical ventilation systems.14,15 However, due to the short-
fall in the stable wind pressure, natural ventilation
systems are usually used for auxiliary purposes.
Thereby, mechanical ventilation systems are mainly
applied to enhance the contaminant removal to meet
requirements for indoor air quality. The recommended
mechanical ventilation systems can be different corre-
sponding to air supply methods, such as mixing venti-
lation,16 displacement ventilation,17 under floor air
distribution18 and personalized ventilation (PV).19
From the scope of engineering applications, the remov-
al efficiency of indoor air contaminant depends on the
ventilation rate and the air flow pattern.20 The primary
problem to control indoor biological pollution through
ventilation system is to seek an approach to quickly
eliminate and destroy the indoor biological contami-
nant under a certain combination of ventilation rate,
air flow pattern21 and maybe ultraviolet germicidal
irradiation (UVGI) from the perspective of ventilation
design.22,23 A review on the control of ventilation sys-
tems in enclosed, and highly occupied spaces, such as
healthcare facilities and public transports, are needed.
Ventilation control for health-care
facilities
Indoor infection risk control for health-care facilities
has been taken seriously since the 2003 severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemics.24 The control
of airborne bacteria and viruses should be guaranteed
to minimize the cross-infection in hospital wards.25
Several measures have been taken to minimize airborne
bacteria and viruses, such as application of high-
efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and UVGI
lamps.22,23 WHO suggests further reinforcement of pre-
caution protocols for aerosol-generating procedures on
all suspect and confirmed COVID-19 patients.26 The
hospital should be properly ventilated to minimize air-
borne bacteria and viruses.27 Focus of the ventilation
design for hospital wards commonly lies on the balance
of indoor air quality and energy efficiency.28
General hospital wards have been designed to meet a
certain air change rate. The minimum ventilation rate, 6
ACH for the total air and 2 ACH for the fresh air are
Ding et al. 1197

Table 1. Collective contagion events happened in enclosed and highly occupied spaces.

Places Layout and infection situation Consequence

Offices Ninety-three
people working
on the 11th-
floor call centre
were tested
positive7

Restaurants Three members of

B family and
two members of
C family sitting
beside Family A
were tested
positive8

Public vehicles Nine people on

the bus were
tested positive
and J got on the
bus after A got
off9

specified in the Chinese Standard, GB 51039–2014,
Code for design of general hospital.29 GB 15982–2012,
Hygienic standard for disinfection in hospitals recom-
mends air distribution of top supply and side return.30
ASHRAE Standard 170–200831 and the UK standard
(HTM 03–01)32 also regulate minimum ventilation
requirements, 6 ACH for general hospital wards. The
European standard (CEN/TS 16244:2018) specifies the
air quality requirements, air ventilation rate, control of
airflow direction, and reduction of bio-contamination
for hospitals.33 WHO Guidelines for natural ventilation
for infection control in health-care settings34 recommend
a ventilation rate of 288 m3/h (nearly 12 air change rate
per hour) per person at least to effectively eliminate the
risk of infection. This means that hospital wards would
require a much higher ACH to guarantee a healthy envi-
ronment for patients and medical staff. Natural ventila-
tion is believed to be a supplement for mechanical
ventilation to control airborne infection due to high ven-
tilation rate requirements in hospital wards.35 Aside
from a high ventilation rate requirement for health-
care facilities, the airflow pattern should also be taken
into consideration due to a strong association between
the airflow and infection transmission.36
Ventilation control for public vehicles
Transportation is thought to be an indispensable part
of the daily life, especially in mega cities. Large pro-
portion of people spend quite a lot of their time inside
1198
public vehicles every day, such as buses and transit
trains (both above ground and underground). Several
investigations on transport microenvironments have
found serious indoor environment quality (IEQ) prob-
lems compared to outdoors.37 The high density of crowd
and relatively enclosed environment may account for
the serious IEQ inside public vehicles. Hence, commut-
ers’ potential exposure to viral infection in such a
restricted indoor environment could engender opportu-
nity for transmission of the virus during epidemics. A
New York-based research38 studied the effect of subway
train travel in an influenza epidemic. In order to control
virus transmission in public transport environment, a
CFD (computational fluid dynamic)-based numerical
model has been developed to integrate with the Wells–
Riley equation to assess the risk of airborne influenza
infection in public transportation.39 Different from the
urban mass transit transportation, the travel on an aero-
plane could last for several hours in duration or several
days on a cruise ship. As such, the effective investigation
of the airflow and contaminants distributions in the air-
craft cabin environment is essential for flight safety and
occupants’ health, comfort and wellbeing.40,41 In addi-
tion, corresponding mechanism should also be estab-
lished to make quantitative assessment of various
intervention measures to reduce the risk of infection
during an epidemic outbreak.42
Extra epidemic prevention measures
for HVAC systems
Except for the air dilution method, other disinfection
and cleaning methods such as HEPA filters, tempera-
ture and humidity control modules and ultra-violet
(UV) germicidal irradiation should be applied to min-
imize air contamination of pollutants and pathogens.
HVAC systems should be further developed to achieve
a higher air quality standard by coupling these disin-
fection and cleaning methods.
HEPA filtration. HEPA filters are commonly used for
particles filtration. HEPA can theoretically remove at
least 99.97% of dust, pollen, moulds, bacteria and any
airborne particles of 0.3 mm size.43 The diameter spec-
ification of 0.3 mm particle size corresponds to the most
penetrating particle size, which represents the most dif-
ficult particle size range to filter. Particles that are
larger or smaller can be captured with an efficiency
higher than 99.97%.43
Liu et al.44 measured aerodynamic diameter of SARS-
CoV-2 aerosols in two hospitals. Among all five size inter-
val ranges, there are two peak concentrations of SARS-
CoV-2 aerosols of 0.25–1.0 mm in the submicron region
and larger than 2.5 mm in super-micron region. Since
Indoor and Built Environment 29(9)
most viruses and microbe particles fall within size speci-
fication that can be easily intercepted, HEPA filters can
be very effective in capturing and removing viruses from
air streams45 as long as they pass through the filter.
Periodic cleaning and filter replacement are required to
keep HEPA functioning properly.
Humidification and temperature. A large amount of
data and studies have found that the spread of patho-
gens and viruses could be facilitated in cold and dry
conditions.46,47 When a person coughs, sneezes or
talks, respiratory droplets rich in water are breathed
out through air passages in the lungs. Due to the low
humidity of the surrounding air, these droplets with
high humidity would lose water through mass transfer,
and the size of droplets would be reduced. On the one
hand, the water content in the particle would have an
important role in diluting the virus, and droplets that are
low in water content are highly infectious to human. On
the other hand, smaller-size infectious droplets would
travel further under the circular airflow driven by the
ventilation system. The indoor relative humidity
between 50 and 60%48 is suggested to reduce the risk
of spreading airborne-infectious diseases.
UV light. UV lights have been used for sterilization
and disinfection as early as the mid-20th century,
which can be installed in an air handling unit or direct-
ly in the ventilation enclosure with no impact on air-
flow pattern circulation. It works by breaking down
certain chemical bonds and disrupting the structure
of DNA, RNA and proteins, causing a microorganism
to become unable to multiply. According to different
sizes and shapes of microorganisms that affect their
UV absorption, the required time for killing each spe-
cies could vary. Modelling the performance of UVGI
devices in ventilated rooms would help to optimize the
efficiency of the sterilization.49
Future challenges of HVAC control
In order to satisfy the requirement of better healthy
environment and more thermal comfort performance
of indoor ventilation system,50 prevention of indoor
pollution is essential, especially considering the purpose
of disease transmission resistance. Conventional
HVAC systems are usually operated with excessively
prescribed ventilation rates and temperature settings,51
without a consideration of energy efficiency. Thus, to
achieve both a healthy indoor environment and build-
ing energy, efficiency would be the main challenge for
designers of HVAC systems.
New and emerging building ventilation technolo-
gies52 may provide solutions to achieve building
energy efficiency and saving, including advanced
Ding et al.
ventilation systems,53 optimized system sensing,54 mon-
itoring55 and controlling technologies56 and data ana-
lytics. CFD modelling has been widely applied for the
design and application of advanced ventilation systems.
However, there is still a long way to go to realize online
control of various types of ventilation systems using
CFD57 since the high demand for practical design
application. To realize online control of ventilation,
the CFD-based Machine Learning method using arti-
ficial intelligence (AI) technology could be a potential
way,57 which provides a high speed and accurate pre-
diction of airflow requirements. Corresponding cross-
disciplinary research on the construction of AI ventila-
tion system should be conducted in the future.
Authors’ contribution
All authors contributed equally in the preparation of this
manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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