- How to improve indoor air cleaner 1- Keep it dry 2- Source control 3- Ventilation 4- Air cleaning
- Filtration (air cleaning) has the shortest history. Only 50-100 years use in buildings. 1/
- ASHRAE standard 52.2 for filtration is only 23 years old.
- Measured CO2 and PM2.5 decay in a classroom that was supposed to be operated at 6 air changes per hour with ventilation and filtration. But it was actually at ~2 air change per hour.
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- Why does filtration fail to meet goals?
- Issue #1. Air has to get to the filter. For central heating homes the recirculating rate can range from 2-8 when the fan is on. BUT the fan can often only 20% of the time, with HUGE variation on the run time.
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- Indoor dust can be resuspended by human activity. Dust can be use as a tracer to determine the presence/absence of RNA (i.e. SARS-COV2).
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- Deployed indoor air cleaners in homes/classroom where people who COVID positive.
- In home cleaners placed in isolation room, outside and in the main living area. After 1-2 weeks dust was removed from filters => extracted => qPCR analysis.
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- Cool mist humidifiers were often used in homes/isolation rooms which greater decrease the flow rates of the air cleaners.
- Isolation rooms in homes had higher copy numbers.
- SARS-COV2 was detected in 2/7 deployed filters in classrooms/lunchrooms.
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