Simulation on the effect of local exhaust ventilation in removing surgical smoke

Department of Building Science, Beijing Key Laboratory of Indoor Air Quality Evaluation and Control, Tsinghua University, China

^* Corresponding author: xtingli@tsinghua.edu.cn

Abstract

The indoor environment of the operating room has a significant impact on the health of personnel. Compared with the pollutants released from occupants, the amount of pollutants generated by surgical equipment is greater, which easily affects the health of patients and doctors. In this study, local exhaust ventilation (LEV) is applied to an operating room and LEV is mounted near the operation zone to remove the surgical smoke from the surgical equipment. CFD technique is used and the surgical smoke concentration reduction potential under different inlet air volumes and different inlet areas of LEV is studied. The results show that compared with the traditional method, when the inlet area of each LEV is set to 0.030 m2, the surgical smoke concentration can be reduced by 10.8%-39.2% as the inlet air volume increases from 0.003 to 0.027 m3/s; when the inlet air volume of each LEV is set to 0.015 m3/s, the surgical smoke concentration can be reduced by 24.7%-31.6% as the inlet area varies from 0.015 to 0.060 m2. This study shows that the LEV has a good potential in reducing surgical smoke concentration in the operating room.

Keywords: operating room, local exhaust ventilation, laminar airflow, surgical smoke, CFD