Airborne lifetime of respiratory droplets

TL;DR

This study models respiratory droplet dynamics in turbulent indoor air, revealing how humidity and turbulence influence droplet lifetime and transmission risk, with longer lifetimes increasing infection chances.

Contribution

It introduces a new model combining vaporization, turbulence, and droplet dynamics to predict airborne droplet lifetime under indoor conditions.

Findings

Higher humidity increases droplet settling velocity, reducing lifetime.

Turbulence broadens the distribution of droplet lifetimes, increasing transmission risk.

Long-lived droplets have non-negligible probabilities, potentially elevating infection risk.

Abstract

We formulate a model for the dynamics of respiratory droplets and use it to study their airborne lifetime in turbulent air representative of indoor settings. This lifetime is a common metric to assess the risk of respiratory transmission of infectious diseases, with longer lifetime correlating with higher risk. We consider a simple momentum balance to calculate the droplets spread, accounting for their size evolution as they undergo vaporization via mass and energy balances. The model shows how an increase in relative humidity leads to higher droplet settling velocity, which shortens the lifetime of droplets and can therefore reduce the risk of transmission. Emulating indoor air turbulence using a stochastic process, we numerically calculate probability distributions for the lifetime of droplets, showing how an increase in the air turbulent velocity significantly enhances the range of lifetimes. The distributions reveal non-negligible probabilities for very long lifetimes, which potentially increase the risk of transmission.