Challenge for Air Indoor Quality on board Submarines 1 SUBMARINE AIR PURIFICATION AND MONITORING Presented at Southern Region Submarine Commanders Conference 03 By

the air quality management system installing and testing on board an air monitoring system and an air depuration system, respectively supplied by ESS Ltd (England) and by D.A.TECH Srl (Italy). The first one consists of a mass spectrometer that analyses gases and pollutants in real time. A personal computer elaborates the data, stores them into a database and displays them on a monitor in the control room, in order to verify current gas trends and to warn the crew of gas concentration exceeding upper or lower limits. This system is able to control the concentration of gases usually found in the submarine atmosphere (as CO, CO2, O2, halogen gases, etc). The KOALA SUB system, supplied by D.A.TECH Srl, has been installed onboard to remove dusts, aerosols and bacteriological pollutants. This is an active system, originally designed for the requirements of hospital operating theatres, and consists of an adequate number of purification devices, defined according to the air flow needing and installation constraints. Each device has a fan that forces the air to pass through the purification system. To remove bacteriological charge and dust particles, that are the main germs diffusion means, there is an advanced air treatment system based on five different steps: mechanical filtration, special activated carbon filtration, ionic filtration, germicide lamp and ionizator. At present time these systems are still at the experimental stage on board of the Italian submarine Pelosi. The ultimate evaluation of the performances and capabilities of the air monitoring and purification systems is expected at the end o