Dr Desmond Lim - University of Bristol

Dr Desmond Lim aims to improve the understanding of scalar dispersion of air pollutants in indoor spaces and utilise this knowledge to improve the accuracy of current mathematical models and numerical tools. Indoor air quality is important as we spend more than 90% of our time indoors where the concentration of air pollutants is often higher than outdoors. In scenarios where there is an accidental release of hazardous air pollutants indoors, accurate and fast prediction of the scalar dispersion is important for real-time risk assessment and decision-making. Nonetheless, this is complicated by the various room ventilation parameters and the turbulence generated by the human activities. Dr Desmond Lim’s research utilises advanced laser-based flow diagnostics to experimentally investigate the interaction of pollutants with physical processes and their relationship with the eddy diffusivity, when subjected to changes in the room ventilation and crowd movement parameters. The research output will improve our current understanding on indoor scalar dispersion and the performance of scalar dispersion models.