Carbon monoxide transport in an enclosed room with sources from a water heater in the adjacent balcony

This paper has presented a computational analysis of carbon monoxide (CO) concentration inside a typical enclosed room of a residential building in Taiwan. CO is produced from a house-used natural gas water heater installed in the balcony. It is then diffused into the adjacent bedroom, which often causes serious poisoning accidences. A general-purpose computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code is employed to predict the CO concentration and airflow fields inside a three-dimensional (3D) modeled house. The variation of CO concentration was simulated under different scenarios of vent air flow rates and exit openings. It was found that under the ventilation conditions of V>0.0003 m/s, the levels of CO concentration in the bedroom is significantly decreased due to the entrainment of fresh air into the bedroom from the inside door. The present results could be used as a base for ventilation design for enclosed rooms, aiming at a proper ventilation system selection for avoiding the CO poisoning.