How do I engineer a complete clean air solution?
To
be most effective, freestanding air cleaners should be designed to
force air upward toward the office ceiling and then take the return
low at the unit's base. This creates a full pattern of circulation,
during which most of the room air passes through the unit?s cleaning
system for decontamination.
The engineering logic of such a system is fairly simple. Yet the air
cleaning industry is rife with purported "solutions" that violate
the first tenet of air cleaning - that is, that no device can remove
a contaminant that doesn't reach it in the first place.
Another tenet is that no one air-cleaning technology can address all
the different types of contamination present in office air. For fine
particulates, the best technology is to use a properly pre-filtered
HEPA filter. True HEPA filters are designed to remove 99.97% of all
particles as small as 0.3 microns (a micron is 1/25,400 of an inch),
effectively taking all particulates out of the air.
For odor removal, the best technology is a filter system combining
carbon and potassium permanganate. The most efficient filters have
a high density of the carbon potassium blend, and are designed so
that the "residence time" during which the contaminated air passes
through the filter system is maximized. Avoid carbon impregnated panels
or pleated filters that don't meet this efficiency criteria.
Furthermore, because carbon adsorbs up to one-third of its weight
in most odor causing gases before saturation, the useful life of a
pad-type filters is very short.
The best solution for removing biologically active hazards is to expose
indoor air to ultraviolet light.
UV light is a long-proven technology that, when properly engineered
into an air purification system, is capable of destroying virtually
any airborne disease-causing contaminant.
