Performance and Effectiveness of Portable Air Cleaners in an Office Room:An Experimental Study

Nowadays, many people work in an office environment. Air pollutants, including particles and gases, are generated byhumans and by different devices that are used in offices. Pollutants can also enter an office room with the air supplied from outdoors. Ithas been established that air pollutants have adverse health effects on human body. Air cleaning devices are commonly marketed asbeing beneficial for the health by removing air pollutants and consequently improving indoor air quality. The performance of five aircleaning technologies was tested in order to determine the generation of ozone and particles in an office room. The particle removaleffectiveness of the technologies was also determined in order to clarify their ability to remove UFPs (ultrafine particles) in the officeroom. The tested five air cleaning technologies are non-thermal plasma, corona discharge ionizer, portable air purifier, electrostaticfibrous filter and three-dimensional fibrous filter. The interior surfaces of the office room emit low levels of volatile organiccompounds, since the office room has not been refurbished for about two decades. The results showed that the particle removaleffectiveness of the technologies was ranged between 0.2 and 0.45 for the office room. The three technologies using/generating ozonesignificantly increased the ozone level in the office room. However, no increase of the UFP concentration was detected