Clearing the Air on HVAC: Arora Featured In Aviation Pros Article

Arora Engineers, Inc. (Arora) was featured in an article by AviationPros.com entitled “Clearing the Air on HVAC,” in which we discuss what role your HVAC system plays regarding protecting the public from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way we think about all the systems in an airport, including the vents. When considering the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, we must ask ourselves what role do they play in spreading the virus and how can they be modified to stop it? When considering how an airport’s HVAC system can be modified for the pandemic, we first need to recognize that these systems are unlike those found in other buildings.

David Marsh, PE, Practice Lead of Mechanical Engineering at Arora, says that airports are unique in that they are never truly unoccupied and experience huge numbers of passengers traveling every day. Marsh says, “In terms of structure, terminals often have tall ceilings with substantial unoccupied vertical space. These distinct circumstances create an environment that requires nimbler HVAC systems, notably Variable Air Volume (VAV) systems, to react to these large fluxes of people by modulating the amount of outside air and total supply air to the occupied spaces.”

Marsh goes on to explain how the Arora team has explored and produced a white paper, “Improvements in Indoor Air Quality for Disease Mitigation”, on several new technologies to fight COVID-19, including bipolar ionization, hydrogen peroxide disinfection technology and ultraviolet (UV-C) light purification systems. “Many of these pathogen-mitigating systems can be applied to new or existing HVAC systems in order to improve indoor air quality and promote health and safety for passengers and airport staff,” Marsh said.

Arora recommends that airports conduct an evaluation of their current HVAC system to determine what modifications they can make to increase filtration, ventilation and potentially introduce pathogen-mitigating technologies.

To read the full Aviation Pros article, click here.