Investigating the transport of fine particulate matter from a point-source in a multi-story house with different modeling approaches

Published

October 1, 2025

Author(s)

Andrew Martin, Stephen Zimmerman, Liora Mael, Dustin Poppendieck, Marina Vance, Delphine Farmer

Abstract

This work investigates the transport of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in a multi-story test house using cooking emissions as a point source. The test house was outfitted with 13 PM2.5 monitors, and particle sources included pan cooking and air frying, as well as ambient PM2.5 penetration during periods of no indoor activity. In the absence of indoor sources, we observed about 10% of ambient PM2.5 concentrations penetrating indoors with a time lag of 1 h. Similar peak PM2.5 concentrations were observed for pan frying and air frying using the same ingredients. A cross-correlation analysis showed that it took 2-4 minutes for kitchen peak concentrations to reach other sensors on the first floor and about 8 minutes to the second floor when the central HVAC fan was on. PM2.5 concentrations were heterogeneous on the first floor, with peak concentrations in non-kitchen areas reaching 45 ± 9% relative to the kitchen. Concentrations on the second floor were more homogeneous with concentration peaks reaching 18 ± 2% relative to the kitchen. The highest estimated personal PM2.5 exposure (44%) was experienced in the kitchen/dining area, accounting for 9% of the time spent at home. We used three modeling approaches to describe particle transport throughout the house, with increasing input requirements: a multi-box model, an empirical model, and the NIST CONTAM model. All models successfully predicted time integrated PM2.5 concentrations on the 1st and 2nd floors, with R2 between 0.57 and 0.82 and RMSE from 6 to 11 µg m-3.

Citation

Indoor Environments

Volume

2

Issue

4

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indenv.2025.100126

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Keywords

Indoor air quality, indoor transport, aerosols, indoor particles, PM2.5, modeling, infiltration

Citation

Martin, A. , Zimmerman, S. , Mael, L. , Poppendieck, D. , Vance, M. and Farmer, D. (2025), Investigating the transport of fine particulate matter from a point-source in a multi-story house with different modeling approaches, Indoor Environments, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indenv.2025.100126, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958912 (Accessed July 30, 2026)

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