Development of Tracer Gas Method to Improve Indoor Air Quality: A Study on Ventilation Performance in Apartment Buildings in South Korea

This study analyzes the shortcomings of South Korea’s current evaluation method of ventilation performance for apartment buildings and suggests improvements. The current Korean regulations rely on the air change rate method, which is a prescriptive method and thus inadequately measures indoor air quality practically. Therefore, this study reviews various standards, finding that these standards can be categorized into those evaluating the mechanical performance of ventilators and those assessing indoor ventilation performance. This study highlights that the standards evaluating indoor ventilation performance are based on the tracer gas method but lack clear testing procedures and boundary conditions. This research also reviews the various previous research articles, noting that Korean research places emphasis on system design parameters, while international research focuses on architectural factors. It also identifies inconsistencies in the experimental setups across studies. To improve the current evaluation methods, the research suggests enhancing the tracer gas method with clear testing procedures and introducing indicators such as the age of air and uniformity coefficient together. Since the air change rate method does not consider the actual airflows and distribution in indoor spaces, this method is limited to deriving improvements in indoor ventilation performance. However, the suggested tracer gas method and indicators can be used to discover the optimal locations of vents for better indoor air quality or to drive a better building design to achieve better indoor ventilation performance. In other words, these enhancements aim to provide more accurate and comprehensive insights into the effectiveness of indoor ventilation systems, helping engineers, designers, and residents better understand and improve indoor air quality.