Dynamic optimization of personal exposure and energy consumption while ensuring thermal comfort in a test house

Owing to significant time spent indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort are critical to ensure occupants' well-being. Buildings already account for a considerable fraction of developed nations’ energy consumption, primarily for maintaining thermal comfort. Measures to improve IAQ can further increase the energy demand. Thus, optimizing IAQ, energy consumption, and thermal comfort is critical. This work presents a dynamic optimization model to investigate the complex and interdependent relationship between personal exposure to particulate matter (PM), thermal comfort, and energy consumption in a test house during typical cooking activities and intense holiday cooking. Surface deposition dominated PM removal for both scenarios (72–78 %). During optimization of the cost function with higher weightage for exposure, exfiltration became the primary PM removal mechanism due to the increased outdoor-indoor air change rate. However, this also increased air conditioning energy consumption. Adding a filter to the recirculation system and increasing the indoor set temperature can save energy while maintaining the same level of exposure reduction achieved via exfiltration alone. Simulations corresponding to higher outdoor temperatures demonstrated that increasing the indoor set temperature from 25°C to 27°C reduces exposure and energy consumption relative to the benchmark without considerable compromise to the comfort level. A high normalized exposure reduction results in an energy-efficient system but might not always translate to a desirable exposure reduction, thus indicating an energy-exposure trade-off.