Orthogonal Design on Range Hood with Air Curtain and Its Effects on Kitchen Environment

Abstract

Conventional range hoods cannot effectively prevent the oil fumes containing cooking-induced harmful material from escaping into the kitchen Air curtains and guide plates have been used in range hoods to reduce the escape of airborne emissions and heat, thereby improving the kitchen environment and the cook's degree of comfort. In this article, numerical simulations are used to study the effects of the jet velocity of an air curtain, the jet angle of the air curtain, the width of the jet slot, the area of the guide plate, and the exhaust rate of the range hood on the perceived temperature, the perceived concentration of oil fumes, the release temperature of oil fumes, and the concentration of escaped oil fumes in a kitchen. The orthogonal experiment results show that the exhaust rate of the range hood is the main factor influencing the fumes concentration and the temperature distribution in the kitchen. For the range hood examined in the present study, the optimum values of the exhaust rate, the jet velocity of the air curtain, the jet angle of the air curtain, the width of the jet slot, and the area of the guide plate are 10.5 m³/min, 1.5 m/s, −5°, 4 mm, and 0.22 m², respectively, based on the results of the parametric study. In addition, the velocity field, temperature field, and oil fumes concentration field in the kitchen using the proposed range hood with the air curtain and guide plate are analyzed for those parameters. The study's results provide significant information needed for improving the kitchen environment.

Keywords:

• air curtain
• range hood
• kitchen environment
• performance evaluation
• parametric study

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was supported financially by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. xjj20100073), and the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of Special Research Fund (Grant No. 20120201110064). The authors are grateful for their support of this research. The authors also would like to thank the editor and referees for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped us improve this article.