We all know that air is a vital element for living organisms. On our planet live is not possible with breath. It is either a tiny bug or a giant blue whale; every living animal needs to breathe. In the view of human beings, the air is a very essential part to remain alive. Human beings have developed many infrastructures, invented much technology to make life easy and comfortable. But every development comes with some environmental problem. Air pollution is one of them and causes many health-related problems. Today we are going to understand the working of a gadget that is helping out to prevent air pollution. This is Air purifier.

What is an Air Purifier?

An air purifier is a gadget that filters air by removing dust particles, harmful bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, and other harmful gases. As we know inhaling polluted air can lead to various health problems like chest congestion, eye irritation, and many others. Pollutants released into confined areas like homes and offices buildings up more than open spaces. Indoor air can be up to five times more polluted or contaminated than outdoor air. An air purifier is specifically designed to filter out pollutants and allergens from the air that cannot be visible by naked human eyes. To achieve this filtration air purifier uses filters, electrostatic attraction, or ozone.

Engineering Inside Air Purifier:

An air purifier contains several parts to remove pollutants and allergens. The shape of this gadget is mainly composed of a casing shell, filter section, duct design, motors, power supply, and LCD panel. Air purifier mainly includes the motor, fan, air filters section, intelligent monitoring system, high voltage circuit, tiny water tank, and more. In every air purifier, the air filter section is the main component and others are remaining secondary but those are also important. We are going to understand the functioning of some components of the air purifier.

Air filters section:

The air filter section is mainly responsible to filter out the air using fine particulate matter filters. Fine particulate matter filters are commercially available to achieve the main goal of purifying air also known as HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filters. HEPA filters are the benchmark for air filters, which can capture 0.3 micron size particles. Micron is the standard unit that is used to measure the size of particles in the air.  The naked eye cannot see particles smaller than 10 microns, so bacteria and viruses escape detection. HEPA filters efficiently remove smaller-sized allergens like heavy element particles, dust, smoke, chemicals, and more.

Water tank:

The water tank in an air purifier is a little bit strange. With the increasing attention of consumers to purifiers, the function of air purification is not only limited to air purification. These can generate and maintain the humidity level of the air to feel comfortable. This is also known as humidification.

Intelligent monitoring system:

The monitoring system is the brain of the air purifier. This system is specifically designed to sense the air quality in real-time and do the purification as per requirement. The monitoring system also provides information on the filters section and water tank.

High voltage circuit:

A high voltage circuit is a kind of secondary-level filtering system. It generally generates negative ions (Anions) to clean the air. Anions have some unique features like promoting appetite and lowering blood pressure.

Motor:

Inside an Air purifier motors are responsible to suck the air and blow the purified air outside. Its main role is to control the flow of air. If you do not want that your air purifier makes noise. To tackle this air purifier requires low noise, does not affect people’s normal life, and has low power consumption. As of now, the air purifier motor has some important features like:

1. The air purifier motor should have a noise level lower than 40dB.
2. Long run time with good reliability and efficiency.
3. The motor should be compact and small in size.

In response to the above points, BLDC motors (Brushless DC motors) are a very good option for air purifiers. These motors have high and low voltage ranges and have some merits like low noise level (less than 40 dB), long service life and good reliability, and low power consumption.

Working of Air Purifier System:

To understand the working of an air purifier we can segregate its functioning into three-phase. The first phase includes a suction motor. This motor is the inlet of the purifying system. Impure air enters in purifier with some certain pressure and moves towards the filtering section. Filtering is the second phase, as we have already discussed filters, in this phase polluted air is purified by using filters and negative ion generators. In the third phase, a pump pushes the purified air outside. In all the phases monitoring and controlling system play their role wisely. This system makes a decision and fine-tuning as per the required level of purification. A display unit on an air purifier shows information related to purification processes. That’s how air purification takes place in an air purifier.

Application of Air Purifier And User Concerns:

Some of the users are worried regarding the use of air purifiers relates to the production of hazardous by-products, noise, electricity consumption, frequency of filter replacement, and more. Most of the air purifiers for personal use either in-home or offices are light weighted and require less handling. Power consumption is low for smaller units and lightweight equipment enables easy to carry from one place to another. Depending upon the extent of use, filter replacement may become necessary once a year (in the average environment).

Air purifier checks the level of virus and bacteria and help to keep indoor air clean and fresh. In the view of industrial application, some of the air purifiers remove toxic fumes, volatile organic matter, oil mist, and harmful odor. Today air purifier applications are not only limited to homes or offices but also in restaurants, gyms, spas, beauty salons, cinema halls, and malls where extensive cleaning is required and air hygiene is mandatory.

Thanks for reading. See you soon with another exploration!