Analysing indoor environmental quality and energy use in an office space

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is a significant contributor to occupants’ health and well-being as well as cognitive performance. Maintaining thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) requires vast amount of energy. Therefore, being able to quantify performance of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in terms both IEQ and energy consumption is important. Hence, this study proposes a methodology to couple energy and indoor climate simulations (IDA ICE) with Python-based IAQ analysis focusing on indoor concentrations of particulate matter (PM) and aims to demonstrate predicting indoor PM concentrations using zone airflows from IDA ICE simulations. The results show that the IAQ analysis can provide valuable information on building performance considering outdoor particulate air pollution.