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Particles released from biomass burning can contribute to severe air pollution. We monitored indoor and outdoor particles in a mechanically ventilated and air-conditioned building during and after the 2013 haze event in Singapore. Continuous monitoring of time-and size-resolved particles in the diameter range 0.01–10 μm was conducted for two weeks in each sampling campaign. During the haze event, the averaged size-resolved outdoor particle volume concentrations (d V /d(log D p )) for diameters larger than 0.3 μm were considerably higher than those during the post-haze days (9–185 μm 3 cm −3 versus 1–35 μm 3 cm −3 ). However, the average number concentration of particles with diameters in the range 10–200 nm was substantially lower on the hazy days than on the post-haze days (11,400 to 14,300 particles cm −3 for hazy days, versus an average of 23,700 particles cm −3 on post-haze days). The building mechanical ventilation system, equipped with MERV 7 filters, attenuated the penetration and persistence of outdoor particles into the monitored building. Indoor particle concentrations, in the diameter ranges 0.3–1.0 μm and 1.0–2.5 μm, closely tracked the corresponding patterns of outdoor particle concentrations. For particles in the size range 0.01–1.0 μm, the size-resolved mean indoor/outdoor (I/O) ratios were in the range 0.12–0.65 with the highest mean I/O ratio at 0.3 μm (0.59 in AC on mode and 0.64 in AC off mode). The air conditioning and mechanical ventilation system with MERV 7 filters provided low single-pass removal efficiency (less than ∼ 30%) for particles with diameters of 0.01–1.0 μm. During the haze, for particles larger than ∼0.2 μm, lower I/O ratios and higher removal efficiencies occurred with the air conditioning operating as compared to with mechanical ventilation only. This observation suggests the possibility of particle loss to air conditioning system surfaces, possibly enhanced by thermophoretic or diffusiophoretic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of a steady flow and heat transfer past a permeable moving thin needle in a hybrid nanofluid is examined in this study. Here, we consider copper (Cu) and alumina (Al2O3) as hybrid nanoparticles, and water as a base fluid. In addition, the effects of thermophoresis and Brownian motion are taken into consideration. A similarity transformation is used to obtain similarity equations, which are then solved numerically using the boundary value problem solver, bvp4c available in Matlab software (Matlab_R2014b, MathWorks, Singapore). It is shown that heat transfer rate is higher in the presence of hybrid nanoparticles. It is discovered that the non-uniqueness of the solutions is observed for a certain range of the moving parameter λ. We also observed that the bifurcation of the solutions occurs in the region of λ < 0 , i.e., when the needle moved toward the origin. Furthermore, we found that the skin friction coefficient and the heat transfer rate at the surface are higher for smaller needle sizes. A reduction in the temperature and nanoparticle concentration was observed with the increasing of the thermophoresis parameter. It was also found that the increase of the Brownian motion parameter leads to an increase in the nanoparticle concentration. Temporal stability analysis shows that only one of the solutions was stable and physically reliable as time evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]