Pedestrian-level ventilation in an urban environment adjacent to a river channel: A case study for Bucharest city – Romania

Increasing evapotranspiration in cities, derived from vegetation and water bodies, can effectively mitigate the effect of urban heat island (UHI). This paper presents a study on an urban ventilation solution for Bucharest City in Romania. The solution is based on lifting air volumes from the free surface of Dambovita River, which crosses the city center where UHI has a significant impact, to the roadway and pedestrian level by using cross-flow fans mounted on floating panels planted with vegetation, which are placed at the river banks. The electric motors of the cross-flow fans are powered by PV solar cells. The real optimal value of evapotranspiration (ETRO) was computed for the case of lucerne in order to assess the air temperature at the surface of the floating panel and a numerical study was performed in order to obtain the velocities of the air flow and the temperature field in a domain containing the free surface of the river, the floating panel surface, and the roadway surface (at pedestrian level). It was observed that, at low flow rates, the cooler air reaches the roadway surface in a compact jet due to the Coanda effect - the coherent air jet is of about 30–40 cm above the ground level. For a day with clear sky and no wind conditions a decrease in the air temperature of 4–5 °C can be obtained at the pedestrian level, within a layer of 1 m height. The study opens the possibility to approach such issues at a greater scale in order to assess the viability of appropriate solutions for cooling down the urban heat island as well.