Lowering the potential of airborne disease transmission in school buildings is especially important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The benefits of increased ventilation and filtration for reducing disease transmission compared to drawbacks of reduced thermal comfort and increased energy consumption and electricity demand are not well described. A comprehensive simulation of outdoor air ventilation rates and filtration methods was performed with a modified Wells-Riley equation and EnergyPlus building simulation to understand the trade-offs between infection probability and energy consumption for a simulated classroom in 13 cities across the US. A packaged heating, ventilation, and air conditioning unit was configured, sized, and simulated for each city to understand the impact of five ventilation flow rates and three filtration systems. Higher ventilation rates increased energy consumption and resulted in a high number of unmet heating and cooling hours in most cities (excluding Los Angeles and San Francisco). On average, across the 13 cities simulated, annual energy consumed by an improved filtration system was 31% lower than the energy consumed by 100% outdoor air ventilation. In addition, the infection probability was 29% lower with improved filtration. An economizer, which activates cooling based on an outdoor temperature setpoint, increased ventilation and reduced both energy consumption and infection probability. It was also concluded that ventilation and filtration measures better reduced absolute infection probability when the quanta generation rate for an infectious disease was higher. Dynamic outdoor airflow rate controls and filtration technologies that consider both health and energy consumption are an important area for further research.

在 COVID-19 大流行之后，降低学校建筑内空气传播疾病传播的可能性尤为重要。与降低热舒适度和增加能源消耗和电力需求的缺点相比，增加通风和过滤以减少疾病传播的好处没有得到很好的描述。使用修改后的 Wells-Riley 方程和 EnergyPlus 建筑模拟对室外空气通风率和过滤方法进行了综合模拟，以了解美国 13 个城市模拟教室的感染概率和能源消耗之间的权衡。为每个城市配置、调整大小和模拟了一个成套的供暖、通风和空调单元，以了解五个通风流量和三个过滤系统的影响。较高的通风率增加了能源消耗，并导致大多数城市（不包括洛杉矶和旧金山）的大量供暖和制冷小时数未得到满足。平均而言，在模拟的 13 个城市中，改进的过滤系统每年消耗的能源比 100% 室外通风所消耗的能源低 31%。此外，通过改进过滤，感染概率降低了 29%。节能器可根据室外温度设定点启动制冷，增加通风并降低能耗和感染概率。还得出结论，当传染病的量子生成率较高时，通风和过滤措施可以更好地降低绝对感染概率。