Comparison of geometrical layouts for a multi-box aerosol model from a single-chamber dispersion study

Models are increasingly used to estimate and pre-emptively calculate the occupational exposure of airborne released particulate matter. Typical two-box models assume instant and fully mixed air volumes, which can potentially cause issues in cases with fast processes, slow air mixing, and/or large volumes. In this study, we present an aerosol dispersion model and validate it by comparing the modelled concentrations with concentrations measured during chamber experiments. We investigated whether a better estimation of concentrations was possible by using different geometrical layouts rather than a typical two-box layout. A one-box, two-box, and two three-box layouts were used. The one box model was found to underestimate the concentrations close to the source, while overestimating the concentrations in the far field. The two-box model layout performed well based on comparisons from the chamber study in systems with a steady source concentration for both slow and fast mixing. The three-box layout was found to better estimate the concentrations and the timing of the peaks for fluctuating concentrations than the one-box or two-box layouts under relatively slow mixing conditions. This finding suggests that industry-relevant scaled volumes should be tested in practice to gain more knowledge about when to use the two-box or the three-box layout schemes for multi-box models