Long term performance of particulate air-filter in an office environment

The present article is based on initial findings of an ongoing study. The objective of present study is to analyse the long term performance of an air particulate filter with and without ionizer. To study the performance of the air filters, a test rig was built in the Danish Building Research Institute - Copenhagen. Two parameters, pressure drop across the filter and ultrafine filtration efficiency of the filter are analysed for describing the performance of the filter. In the preliminary findings it was found that the ultrafine particle filtration efficiently of the air filter was 60%. The efficiency decreased with time. The pressure drop across the filter did not decrease significantly. When the same type of filter was used in with air ionizer, the efficiency at the beginning was 90% but it reduced to 60% after 1500 running hours. Hence it is concluded that the filtration efficiency does not increase much by the introduction of the ionizer on long term basis.