Paolo Tronville is an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, the renowned engineering school in Turin, Italy. He received his undergraduate and PhD degrees from the Politecnico. His postgraduate studies focused on the assessment of the performance of air filter elements for general ventilation. He joined the Politecnico Faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1997, and advanced to Associate Professor in 2012.
Paolo has been active in national and international standards development. He joined ASHRAE in 1997. He contributed in the development of several ASHRAE publications. These include Standards 145.1 and 145.2 for testing gas‐phase air cleaning media and devices; Standard 52.2 for testing particulate air filters; Guideline 26 for testing general ventilation filters in situ; and Guideline 35P for determining the energy impact of air cleaning devices. He has been a member of ASHRAE Technical Committee 2.3 (Gaseous contaminants and their control); TC 2.4 (Particulate contaminants and particulate filters); and TC 4.10 (Indoor environmental monitoring). He helped develop, evaluate and monitor several research projects. Hereceived the ASHRAE Distinguished Service Award in June 2015.
Paolo was instrumental in reactivating ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Committee 142 “Cleaning Equipment for Air and Other Gases”, which had been inactive since 1976. He was its Chairman from September 2005 through 2016. Under his guidance TC 142 grew to have twelve active Working Groups. It now has about two hundred experts from twenty participating countries. Eighteen new standards were prepared under his chairmanship and several others are in preparation.
Since 2006 Paolo has been the Chairman of CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation) Technical Committee 195 (Air Filters for General Air Cleaning). He heads CEN TC195 Working Group 6, in charge of developing test methods of filtration media in removing nanomaterials. Paolo worked also in the field of standardization of air filtration for the automotive industry (ISO/TC22/SC7). He was the Italian expert in the group which developed the test method for efficiency‐vs‐particle size of engine intake and cabin air filters.
In 2012 he was awarded the Paolo Scolari Award by UNI (the Italian national standardization body) in honor of his work in studying, disseminating and standardizing topics related to air cleaning and hygiene. Paolo carries on research in air cleaning and indoor air quality. He has published papers in both European and American technical and scientific journals. He is currently involved in the application of computational fluid dynamics to air filter media and filter design, and in the development of laboratory and in‐situ test methods to assist predicting the actual performance of air cleaning equipment.
Paolo has given seminars in several countries on air cleaning equipment performance and its energy implications. He is one of the authors of REHVA (Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Airconditioning Associations) Guidebook 11, “Air Filtration in HVAC Systems”. The book is intended to educate designers, manufacturers, installers and building owners on the role of air filters in improving IAQ, their actual behavior in service and the costs associated to air filtration. The book has been translated from English into Italian, Japanese and Portuguese.
At the Politecnico Paolo teaches courses on energy performance and use in buildings, indoor air quality, acoustics and lighting. He is the supervisor of the Aerosol Technology and Filter Testing Laboratory which is recognized as a major independent laboratory to assess the performance of air cleaning equipment for many applications, ranging from HVAC serving commercial buildings to filters for the intakes of gas turbine systems.
Paolo likes to play cards with friends and relatives, especially at night in his vacation cottage in the Italian countryside, while eating pears boiled in sweet red wine. He has practiced judo, skiing and soccer. Being a true son of Torino, he likes to watch the Juventus Football Club games whenever he has the chance to do so.
HVAC system designers today have available computer programs which allow accurate determination of heating and cooling loads for specific building locations. In addition, there are programs which enable optimum choices for many system components (cooling coils, blowers, ductwork, etc.). There are, however, no generally accepted programs with which to determine the particulate matter indoor concentration and the air quality which will be obtained from given filter designs at specified locations. This is partially due to the complex nature of airborne particulate contamination and filtration processes, which have hindered the development of designer tools for filter systems. Air filters are often chosen on the basis of what worked somewhere. However, the design of HVAC air filter systems for particulate matter control is not entirely unquantifiable. Data are available on the nature and concentration of air contaminants in many locations world-wide, and on acceptable levels to be maintained indoors. Internationally accepted filter test standards exist which
allow approximate calculation of the effect of filters on contaminant levels, and, in some cases, the expected energy consumption and cost impacts of filter systems. The proposed lecture is intended to
illustrate what tools are now available to quantify the particulate matter and the design of filtration systems. Examples of performance calculations using existing data sources will be presented.
To size a ventilation system and its components for control of PM concentrations, it is necessary to know the PM concentration and size distribution in outdoor air, and the same parameters for PM generated in the ventilated space. However, all these data are seldom made available by the customer or by environmental agencies. The lecture will provide guidance to data sources for filtration system design, and suggestions for estimating parameter values for locations and conditions where data are inadequate. The lecture will explain the operating principles and the potential applications of some particle measurement equipment. With this knowledge, designers can select instruments to show the effectiveness of installed filtration systems, if such tests are desired by clients.
Some HVAC designers rely on the information conveyed by air filter salesmen in order to choose the air filters to be installed or to compare different options. This lecture will explain the meaning of filter performance data measured in the laboratory (not only those used for the classification system) and explain their relation to actual conditions in ventilation systems. The effects of filter pressure drop on the performance of other system components will be discussed.
Air cleaning equipment is produced and sold in many countries. This global activity has made the creation of international standards and rating systems more a necessity than a convenience. A committee of the International Standards Organization, ISO/TC142, prepares standards related to filtration applications and components. The lecture will update audiences about the current status of international standards in the field of air cleaning equipment. ASHRAE involvement in standards writing will be described, and suggestions sought from audiences for improvement of standards.