Good ventilation for open kitchen in a studio apartment?

Question

I live in a typical studio apartment in US. It has an open kitchen with a range hood but the the range hood only sucks smoke from the stove to the ceiling, i.e., no outside air circulation. This is the layout of my studio:

The window and front door are the only two openings to outside. There are not windows or ventilation fans in the bathroom. I have put a window fan at the window, which points outwards.

When I cook, it creates a substantial amount of smoke. It takes a day for the odor to mostly disappear. I am afraid the window fan is not very helpful because it only allows the air between the window and the front door to circulate. The air of most part of my home, including the stove, is still dead. So, I would have to wait for the smoke to slowly diffuse to the area between the window and the front door and be removed.

What should I do to make the fresh air circulate through my whole home so that the odor could be removed quickly?

Thank you!

Answer 1

I see two solutions. To fix this properly, you should add a duct to move the flow from the stove to outside a window or some other way out of the apartment. Since that is probably outside your reasonable area of cost/benefit, you can use your current exhaust fan, but add another fan in the room that perturbs all the air. It will not be as efficient as direct extraction via the range hood, but it will probably clear the air in around an hour.

Answer 2

I think a ceiling fan might help.

Answer 3

Another solution came to my mind. You did not mention any details of the room, so I cannot tell if it is doable in your case.

The solution suggested by @WeatherVane is good, IF you change the direction of the airflow, as you stated in a comment. However, there will still be a lot of smoke in the room.

My idea would be to use flexible (maybe even extensible) tubes. Connect one end to the output of the hood, and the other end will dangle near the window. When you want to cook, just place the dangling end outside - and no smoke will travel the room freely.

It will work best if you already have some tall furniture on the wall between the door and the window. Or if you can hang the tubes somehow from the ceiling (or the upper parts of the wall).

You can use some tall supports on the floor (even DIY), to hang the tubes near the ceiling. The idea is applied for the lamp below, to "suspend" the bulb:

Answer 4

I am not sure that the setup below is practically possible (depending on the items availability in the shops).

The basic idea would be to create a path to remove all "poluted" air outside.

1. The kitchen hood pushes air through the first tube into a tube in the bathroom.
2. The tube in the bathroom is thicker that the tube in the kitchen.
3. There is a vent opening at the beginning of the tube in the bathroom.
4. The tube from the kitchen goes "significantly" past this vent opening.
5. After a "while", the bathroom vent tube may have a smaller diameter.
6. At the exit from the room (to the outside world), there is an extracting ventilator.

So:

1. If only the hood ventilator is on, it will exhaust air outside, pulling some of the bathroom air also.
2. If only the outside ventilator is ON, then it will extract air from both kitchen and bathroom.
3. If both ventilators are ON, they both work together for the same thing.

This solution assumes that you are able / want to drill some thick holes for the ait tubes, one of them on the exterior wall.

NOTE: The room may actually have a venting tube already somewhere, in which case you only need to connect to that venting tube - at least one less drilling.

Answer 5

Obtain a free-standing folding screen to place between the door and the window.

This will divert the moving air past the cooker.