Nowadays, with the increased concern of Indoor Air Quality, portable air cleaner is commonly utilized to treat air in indoor environments. Testing standards for air cleaner in evaluating their performances are also in response to their rapid development. However, all of them are chamber test where the air change rate, deposition rate inside are under controlled and minimized. There is a great discrepancy compared with the practical use in real scenario so that it is necessary to determine the difference of the removal performance obtained under the conditions in control room and in residences. In this study, five air cleaners with different operation principles were tested in both control test and field tests. There were no combustion related activities inside the six residences visited...[ Read more ]

Nowadays, with the increased concern of Indoor Air Quality, portable air cleaner is commonly utilized to treat air in indoor environments. Testing standards for air cleaner in evaluating their performances are also in response to their rapid development. However, all of them are chamber test where the air change rate, deposition rate inside are under controlled and minimized. There is a great discrepancy compared with the practical use in real scenario so that it is necessary to determine the difference of the removal performance obtained under the conditions in control room and in residences. In this study, five air cleaners with different operation principles were tested in both control test and field tests. There were no combustion related activities inside the six residences visited in the field tests and atmospheric dust was used as the test dust. The revised Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of each air cleaner was evaluated by performing a simplified indoor particulate analysis.

The performance of the electronic air cleaner was more dependent on the surface area of the testing venue and higher CADR was obtained in residences than in the control room which could be as large as 6.9 times in maximum for small particles. The removal efficiency of the air cleaners was also dependent on their flow characteristics and the degree of mixing of air delivered from the air cleaner. A 10 - 20 % reduction on average was found for the CADRs obtained in the six residences compared with the results measured in the control test. In the perspective of the running cost, the initial cost of purchasing the air cleaners contributed 76 % on average reflected in the cost analysis and this would be the decisive factor compared with the operation and the maintenance costs. The selection of air cleaner by air cleaning effectiveness (f_CADR) is suggested in this study. All air cleaners showed within the optimum range from the balance between the cost consideration and the particulate removal effectiveness compared with other removal rates in residences.