ventilation project

Ventilation in Community Venues

In late 2021, it became clear that Covid-19 was airborne and spread by aerosols in exhaled air from people carrying the virus, rather than by heavier droplets or by touching contaminated surfaces. Steve Pagden, an SCCT volunteer with a background in engineering, undertook a project with Heeley Trust to assess the safety of community venues. CO2 monitors were used as a proxy for risk of spread of Covid-19 along with our knowledge locally of the incidence of infection. The effectiveness of improved ventilation and the use of air filtration units was assessed.

This work is ongoing and is being evaluated. It has already been beneficial in encouraging anxious vulnerable people to rejoin their pre-pandemic activities and groups.

Powered By EmbedPress

Steve Pagden presented the findings from his project so far at our online conference in December 2023. A recording of his presentation is here:

Following on from Steve's presentation, we went on to offer funding to students at The Engineering & Design Institute London (TEDI), who Steve had been working with.

Steve had been doing some work with students at TEDI London, and was particularly impressed by students Oliver Bridge and Zhe Xian Chew. They had worked on initial designs for an air quality monitoring device, and Steve suggested to SCCT that we offer them some funding the develop a prototype from what they had designed.

We felt this was an important area to fund, since the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted that there is a general lack of knowledge about indoor air quality, and we were hopeful that this student-led project could make a difference. We were delighted to hear from Ollie and Zhe on a webinar in May 2025, where they shared the design and development journey that they had gone through with “Making The Invisible Visible”.

The Design Brief that the students were working from was:

Deliver a working device capable of measuring the following objects within an indoor setting:

• CO2 (optional, Aranet 4 does this well)

• PM

• VOC

• NOx

• Ambient temperature

• Humidity

The device should aim to assist Heeley Trust to introduce air quality improvement strategies such as helping define the operating parameters for the portable filtration systems they already have in use. The device should be able to store and recall data, easy to use and understand.

There is an importance of reproducibility, reliability, relative low cost and ease of use and maintenance. The current system, Aranet 4 is a CO2 monitor which Heeley Trust, SCCT and Jon Fluxman have used, It is required that the new sensor either works in collaboration with or complements the Aranet 4. The device should be validated within the project for air quality measurements. Boundary levels for measurements should be defined within the project for use within indoor settings.

Deliverables: