Performance of personalized ventilation on bioaerosol deposition and inhalation of cough droplets

Proper design of personalized ventilation (PV) is an effective way to mitigate the risk of airborne disease transmission. However, there is a lack of research on the effectiveness of PV to reduce bioaerosol deposition on human body surfaces. This work experimentally investigated the performance of PV on prevention of bioaerosol deposition on a healthy person (HP), who was influenced by cough activities from an infected person (IP) over a short distance. Escherichia coli (E. coli) was employed to represent the bacteria from the respiratory droplets. The bioaerosol deposition on the HP's face, shoulder, chest and body back was characterized by a bacterial cultivation method. It is found that the bioaerosol deposition and inhalation can be substantially reduced by turning on the PV. The results show that PV can protect the person effectively and it could be a potential method for infection control in the disease transmission.