Energy Cost for Effective Ventilation and Air Quality for Healthy Buildings: Plant Proposals for a Historic Building School Reopening in the Covid-19 Era.

The COVID19 pandemic has changed the engineering approach to building and plant design. In Italy, most of the school heritage belongs to historical buildings, which are not only under constraints for the protection and prevention of loss of cultural heritage but are often created with a different intended use. Starting from the current sanitary measures for reopening during the Covid19 era and the crucial current research on this matter, the feasibility of plant retrofit, refurbishment solutions by means of effective ventilation and air quality are investigated. Various plant solutions based on demand controlled mechanical ventilation, operating 24 h a day, seven days a week, without air recirculation mode, for a historical high school building were studied using transient simulations. A result comparison showed that it is possible to obtain healthy school environments by means of an optimal compromise between energy savings and the best ventilation conditions for indoor air quality.