Nonthermal Plasma Assisted Photocatalytic Air Purification and Sterilization at Ambient Conditions

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Along with the industrialization and urbanization of human society, air pollution has become a significant environmental health problem over recent decades and improving the quality of the air has therefore received a considerable amount of attention, especially in the period of COVID-19 pandemic due to its airborne feature. Improving indoor air quality has become particularly important as people generally spend significantly more time (more than 90%) indoors than outdoors in modern society. In this context, a wide variety of air cleaning techniques such as filtration, adsorption, ozonation, UV photolysis, photocatalytic oxidation, cold plasma, and botanical purification, have been developed but unfortunately, none of these technologies are able to effectively remove all indoor pollutants and many are found to generate undesirable by-products during operation. An innovative hybrid system combining nonthermal plasma and photocatalysis as well as particle filtration is thus proposed for providing a one-stop indoor air purification and sterilization solution. Empowered by the strong academic-industrial team with complimentary expertise in the fields of plasma, catalysis, biology, air sanitation, and manufacturing, this project aims to not only develop a highly integrated and cost-effective air purifier at research prototype scale for showcasing the complete removal of commonly encountered VOCs, pathogens (e.g., virus, bacteria, and fungi), inorganic pollutants (e.g., NOx, CO, and SOx), and solid particle matters with acceptable lifetime for commercial use, but also gain an in-depth understanding of the nonthermal plasma-photocatalytic oxidation and inactivation mechanism. The outcomes yielded from this proposed project will feed the industrial partner a complete engineering package, enabling their immediate product design and massive fabrication of the developed air purifier with one-pass air processing capacity up to 2,400 m3/h for satisfying the domestic and international market with a high-end air sanitation product, thus further solidifying the Canada's leading position in environmental innovation with economic benefits and making Canada an even better place to live.