Análise da aerodispersão de contaminantes em laboratórios de pesquisa com biossegurança

Abstract

This study was proposed to analyse the transport of airborne particle contaminants that are generated within research laboratories with biosafety level. The analysis were conducted using numerical simulations, with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. Three benchmarks, related to this class of problems, were used for CFD code validation. This thesis’ modeling assumption was that related contaminants were generated inside a biological safety cabinet (BSC). Several scenarios were modeled, in order to promote sensitivity tests on the BSC’s contaminant containment to variations on selected boundary condition values. Representative factors related to the containment capability and room ventilation effectiveness were defined and calculated for each scenario, in order to support the comparison analysis and conclusions. Results demonstrated that containment, for this class of problems, is affected by indoor flow turbulence intensity and by the BSC’s inflow velocity. The strategy of increasing room ventilation rate may reduce this containment cabapility. A transient simulation was performed, in order to produce information on the order of the time scale related to the transport of the contaminant from the BSC to the room occupied zone.