Clean Air Quality and Ventilation

Clean air quality and effective ventilation are among the essential requirements for a healthy life and a productive working environment. Today, with the increasing amount of time spent indoors, the importance of air circulation and indoor air quality has grown significantly.

A well-designed ventilation system plays a key role in removing harmful particles, dust, and pollutants, ensuring a continuous supply of fresh and breathable air in living and working spaces.

What is Clean Air?

Under normal conditions (such as in an office environment), air with less than 0.1% carbon dioxide concentration is considered clean breathable air.

In workplaces, shopping malls, business centers, co-working spaces, and factory offices, air quality should also be evaluated based on the presence of gases, dust, and other harmful particles, in addition to carbon dioxide.

Air Requirements

An adult requires about 30 cubic meters of purified air per hour. Normally, it is accepted that natural ventilation changes the air in an environment 2-3 times per hour. In workplaces, the air volume per person should be at least 10 cubic meters (excluding ceiling heights above 4 meters).

When calculating air requirements:

• The minimum ceiling height in workplaces should be 3 meters.
• In environments containing harmful dust and gases, the ceiling height should be at least 3.5 meters.
• The minimum free space per employee should be 2.5 m².
• As a minimum for each employee present:
  • Mainly sedentary work: 12 m³ of air.
  • Mainly standing work: 15 m³ of air.
  • Heavy physical labor: 18 m³ of air.

Air Change Rates by Workplace Type

To maintain a continuous supply of clean breathable air, hourly air change rates should be calculated as follows:

• Offices 3-6 times
• Cashier rooms 3-6 times
• Changing rooms 4-6 times
• Garages 4-6 times
• Restaurants and canteens 4-8 times
• Toilets, bathrooms, and showers 4-8 times
• Battery manufacturing areas 5-10 times
• Laboratories 5-10 times
• Paint shops 5-15 times
• Laundries 5-15 times
• Factory kitchens (large-scale) 6-8 times
• Spray painting operations 20-50 times
• Small kitchens 15-20 times

In industrial environments where welding, grinding, and similar heavy-duty processes take place, local exhaust ventilation should be used to immediately capture and filter polluted air, ensuring continuous fresh air supply and improved air quality.

Types of Ventilation Systems

• Natural Ventilation

  • Air exchange through windows, doors, or openings connecting indoor and outdoor environments.

• General Ventilation

  • Supplying air from outside (bottom-up ventilation).
  • Extracting indoor air to the outside (top-down ventilation).
  • Introducing air from the top while extracting from the bottom.

• Local Exhaust Ventilation

  • Removing gases, fumes, or harmful chemicals at the source.
  • Fixed Fume Extraction Systems (equipped with movable suction arms).
  • Mobile Fume Extraction Units (filtering air and releasing it back as clean, breathable air).

For more details and customized solutions, please contact our sales representatives.

Further Resources on Air Quality:

1. Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change – Air Monitoring (SIM)
   https://www.havaizleme.gov.tr
2. Clean Air Rights Platform
   https://www.temizhavahakki.com
3. Air Quality Assessment Regulation
   View PDF