The Impact of Indoor Living Wall System on Air Quality: A Comparative Monitoring Test in Building Corridors

Abstract

Living wall systems have been widely recognized as one of the promising approaches for building applications due to their aesthetic value and ecological benefits. Compared with outdoor living wall systems, indoor living wall systems (ILWS) play a more vital role in indoor air quality. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of ILWS on indoor air quality. In an office building, two parallel corridors were selected as comparative groups. A 10.6 m² ILWS was installed on the sidewall of the west corridor while the east corridor was empty. Some important parameters, including indoor air temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), and particulate matter (PM) were obtained based on the actual environment monitoring. According to the statistical analysis of the data, there were significant differences in the concentrations of CO₂ and PMs in the corridors with and without ILWS, which indicated that CO₂ and PM_2.5 removal rate ranged from 12% to 17% and 8% to 14%, respectively. The temperature difference is quite small (0.13 °C on average), while relative humidity slightly increased by 3.1–6.4% with the presence of the ILWS.