Air Cleaning Drone Feasibility: Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Attached Air Filtration Units to Reduce Indoor Particulate Matter

When large amounts of dust, pollen, mold, and organic compounds are trapped in the Earth\u27s atmosphere, the air becomes polluted, affecting the overall quality of indoor and outdoor air. The objective of this project was to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle attached filtration apparatus and determine the effectiveness of the its ability to remove particulate matter (PM) from the air. Specifically, this aspect focused on analyzing the efficiency of this device. The drone was flown for three, five seven, nine and eleven minutes in four different configurations. Baseline measurements were taken to determine the average change in the drone cage over the testing time. PM 2.5, 1.0 and 10 levels were measured at the center and left corner of the cage on the floor, one meter, and two meters above the floor. Tests were run with the filter unattached to the drone, the filter on the ground while the drone was in flight, and the filter attached to the flying drone. An OLS regression was run to measure the statistical significance of the change in the PM 2.5 levels during the different tests. The filer attached to the drone produced an average negative change that was significant to the 0.1 level. However, the test with the immobile filter with the drone in flight produced an average negative change significant at the 0.05 level, suggesting that mobility alone does not better filter