Estimation of time-varying pollutant emission rates in a ventilated enclosure: inversion of a reduced model obtained by experimental application of the modal identification method

A method is proposed for the estimation of time-varying emission rates of pollutant sources in a ventilated enclosure, through the resolution of an inverse forced convection problem. Unsteady transport–diffusion of the pollutant is considered, with the assumption of a stationary velocity field remaining unchanged during emission (passive contaminant). The pollutant transport equation is therefore linear with respect to concentration. The source's location is also supposed to be known. As the first step, a reduced model (RM) linking concentrations at a set of control points to emission rates of sources is identified from experimental data by using the modal identification method (MIM). This parameter estimation problem uses transient contaminant concentration measurements made at control points inside the ventilated enclosure, corresponding to increasing and decreasing steps of emission rates. Such experimental modelling allows us to avoid dealing with a CFD code involving turbulence modelling and to get rid of uncertainties about sensors position. In a second step, the identified RM is used to solve an inverse forced convection problem: from contaminant concentration measured at the same control points, rates of sources emitting simultaneously are estimated with a sequential in time algorithm using future time steps