Numerical analysis of ventilation systems depending on cooking activities in small and medium food industries in Malaysia / Wan Muhamad Syafiq Wan Ismail

People who work in food industries that conducting cooking activities in their food processing are exposed to unhealthy environment that is believed to put them at a greater risk of respiratory problems or infections. However, limited information is currently available in the published literature regarding Internal Air Quality (IAQ) in Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) kitchen. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the distribution and concentration of the CO2 in the SMEs kitchen area. The primary goal of this research is to reduce the pollutants in the kitchen environment by examining the CO2 gases produces from the cooking activities. An experiment has been conducted in three different SMEs of food industry which conducting various cooking methods in their food processing such as frying, boiling and baking. Then, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was employed for one of the SMEs due to the worst CO2 concentration during the experimental phase. The model was then validated by comparing its result with the experimental data obtained and SST k-ω model was chosen due to the measured value matched. CFD was then simulated considering with three different cases of ventilation type such as wall mounted exhaust fans, kitchen range hood and window. The effect of different ventilation mode and airflow rates on carbon dioxide distribution was significant, by changing the type of ventilation to kitchen range hood, the concentration of CO2 can be reduced by 21%. Moreover, the installation of a kitchen hood can help the room decreased the CO2 if compared without the hood. The findings illustrated that CO2 concentration distribution could be greatly influenced by the proper ventilation and this study shows that using kitchen range hood is the best type of ventilation to be used in the SMEs. Besides, effects of increasing ventilation rate, every 500 m3/h ventilation rate increased the CO2 concentration can be reduce around 7% to 13%.