Effect of Gender, Age, Air-Conditioning and Thermal Experience on the Perceptions of Inhaled Air

The comfort range of inhaled air temperature is meaningful to the design of air conditioning parameters at breathing zone. In summer, eight college students and eight middle-aged people were recruited to conduct a thermal comfort study in the natural and air-conditioning environment respectively. The subjects were exposed to different inhaled air temperatures from 18 °C to 34 °C at an interval of 2 °C. The study found that the perceived air quality and thermal pleasure of warm inhaled air is better in the surrounding of natural environment than that of air-conditioning environment. The neutral temperature of inhaled air is 28 °C and 26 °C, respectively. The thermal sensation vote has no significant difference between middle-aged and young people, while the thermal pleasure, air freshness and perceived air quality of middle-aged people are better than that of the young people. When the temperature of the inhaled air is 2 °C higher than the ambient temperature, the SBS symptoms are significantly increased. Therefore, the comfort range of temperature of heated air in winter is worth to be further studied.