• Journal of odor and indoor environment
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.54-63
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• 2017

The Automobile HVAC system is a habitat for odor-associated fungal communities. We investigated the odor-associated fungal community in an automobile HVAC system using a high-throughput DNA sequencing method. The fungal community structure was evaluated via metagenome analysis. At the phylum level, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were detected, accounting for 43.41% and 56.49% of the fungal community in the HVAC system, respectively. Columnosphaeria (8.31%), Didymella (5.60%), Davidiella (5.50%), Microxyphium (4.24%), unclassified Pleosporales (2.90%), and Cladosporium (2.79%) were abundant at phylum of Ascomycota and Christiansenia (36.72%), Rhodotorula (10.48%), and Sporidiobolus (2.34%) were abundant at phylum of Basidiomycota. A total of 22 genera of fungi were isolated and identified from the evaporators of the HVAC systems which support fungal growth and biofilm formation. Among them, Cladosporium, Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Alternaria are the most representative odor-associated fungi in HVAC systems. They were reported to form biofilm on the surface of HVAC systems with other bacteria by hypha. In addition, they produce various mVOCs such as 3-methyl-1-butanol, acetic acid, butanoic acid, and methyl isobutyl ketone. Our findings may be useful for extending the understanding of odor-associated fungal communities in automobile HVAC systems.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.468-471
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• 2005

The Air Quality Sensor(AQS), located near the fresh air inlet, serves to reduce the amount of pollution entering the vehicle cabin through the HVAC(heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system by sending a signal to close the fresh air inlet door/ventilation flap when the vehicle enters a high pollution area. One chip sensor module which include above two sensing elements, humidity sensor and bad odor sensor was developed for AQS (air quality sensor) in automobile. With this sensor module, PIC microcontroller was designed with back propagation neural network to reduce detecting error when the motor vehicles pass through the dense fog area. The signal from neural network was modified to control the inlet of automobile and display the result or alarm the situation. One chip microcontroller, Atmega128L (ATmega Ltd., USA) was used. For the control and display. And our developed system can intelligently detect the bad odor when the motor vehicles pass through the polluted air zone such as cattle farm.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.539-546
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• 2006

The Air Quality Sensor(AQS), located near the fresh air inlet, serves to reduce the amount of pollution entering the vehicle cabin through the HVAC(heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system by sending a signal to close the fresh air inlet door/ventilation flap when the vehicle enters a high pollution area. The sensor module which includes two independent sensing elements for responding to diesel and gasoline exhaust gases, and temperature sensor and humidity sensor was designed for intelligent AQS in automobile. With this sensor module, AVR microcontroller was designed with back propagation neural network to a powerful gas/vapor pattern recognition when the motor vehicles pass a pollution area. Momentum back propagation algorithm was used in this study instead of normal backpropagation to reduce the teaming time of neural network. The signal from neural network was modified to control the inlet of automobile and display the result or alarm the situation in this study. One chip microcontroller, ATmega 128L(ATmega Ltd., USA) was used for the control and display. And our developed system can intelligently reduce the malfunction of AQS from the dampness of air or dense fog with the backpropagation neural network and the input sensor module with four sensing elements such as reducing gas sensing element, oxidizing gas sensing element, temperature sensing element and humidity sensing element.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.288-291
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• 2011

Recommendations for older driver-friendly automobile interior design have been determined by taking into account older people's physical and cognitive characteristics. Twenty three older people (aged from 54 to 78) and five younger people (from 20 to 29) performed several tasks in actual driving conditions, in which their reaction times and performance errors were recorded. Some design factors were found to be related to older drivers' visibility and controllability. Several design recommendations were proposed in terms of cluster color and font, display location, and HVAC control type. Proposed recommendations are expected to satisfy a wider range of older drivers as these will facilitate automobile interior designs which are fitter to older drivers' visual, cognitive, and manual capabilities.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.616-623
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• 2007

A dual micro gas sensor array was fabricated using nano sized $SnO_2$ thin films which had good sensitivities to CO and combustible gases, or $H_2S$ gas for air quality sensors in automobile. The already existed air quality sensor detects oxidizing gases and reducing gases, the air quality sensor(AQS), located near the fresh air inlet detected the harmful gases, the fresh air inlet door/ventilation flap was closed to reduce the amount of pollution entering the vehicle cabin through HVAC(heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system. In this study, to make $SnO_2$ thin film AQS sensor, thin tin metal layer between 1000 and $2000{\AA}$ thick was oxidized between 600 and $800^{\circ}C$ by thermal oxidation. The gas sensing layers such as $SnO_2$, $SnO_2$(pt) and $SnO_2$(+CuO) were patterned by metal shadow mask for simple fabrication process on the silicon substrate. The micro gas sensors with $SnO_2$(+Pt) and $SnO_2$(CuO) showed good selectivity to CO gas among reducing gases and good sensitivity to $H_2S$ that is main component of bad odor, separately.