A Study of Indoor Air Quality In UTP's Academic Buildings No.18 Level 3

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a term referring to the air quality within and
around buildings and structures, especially as it relates to the health and comfort of
building occupants. Research shows that people spend approximately 90 percent of
their time indoor, therefore, for many people, the risks to health may be greater due
to exposure to air pollution indoors than outdoors. Uuiversiti Teknologi PETRONAS,
a place where education takes place, has been build for more than 10 years. In
addition, the location is in Malaysia, a hot and humid country. Academic building 18,
level 3 is an office for lecturers. The growth of mold, and fungi can be seen at the
back of the chairs. This situation indicates that there is something wrong with
surrounding environment. Thus, a study is conduct to determine the current status of
IAQ inside the building. Next, when the culprit is found, root cause analysis is done
by listing all the possible causes and the main reason is selected. Finally,
improvement study is done based on how to solve the problem detected before. The
temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide (C02) content, ventilation rate and the PMIO
content are being recorded. When all the results gains are compared to standard, only
PMIO concentration is not complying with it. In the root cause diagram, the four
main possible causes for high PMIO concentrations are manpower, machines (which
refer to HV AC system), materials and design. After an analysis on all4 main factors,
filtration is chosen as the main cause of this problem. In order to perform
improvement study, another set of data collection of PMlO on the upstream of the
filter is recorded to find its efficiency. From the calculation, the efficiency of current
used filter is only 33.91% compared to its original, 80%. Also, the filter has been
used for up to 6 years now, since 2006, exceeding its original life cycle, which is I
year. Suggestion on changing to new filter is made to over come this problem.