Energy and Ultrafine Particle Removal Efficiency of HVAC Air Filters

空气过滤器用于建筑空气系统，以去除空气中的颗粒物，保持室内环境清洁。室内空气中的颗粒物会给暴露在不清洁空气中的人带来健康问题和生产力损失。在建筑系统中安装空气过滤器增加了气流阻力，并需要更多的能源来运行建筑。目前还没有准确预测空气过滤器所用能量的方法，也没有方法比较不同过滤选项的能效。这项研究的目标是提供这样一种模型，该模型可以用于使用所有空气过滤产品目前可用的信息来比较空气过滤器。该模型将与机场的实际过滤器安装进行比较，以确保足够的准确性。这些实验还将调查对人体危害最大的颗粒物(1微米)与商用空气过滤器的相互作用。这将提供有关空气过滤器捕获细小颗粒的有效性的信息。这些颗粒物的化学成分将被确定，以进一步了解通过当前空气过滤器的颗粒物的组成。

Air filters are used in building air systems to remove particles from the air and keep the indoor environment clean. Particles in indoor air can cause health problems and loss of productivity for people exposed to unclean air. Installing air filters in the building system increases the resistance to flow and requires more energy to operate a building. There is currently no method to accurately predict the amount energy used by an air filter or to compare the energy efficiency of different filtration options. The goal of this research is to provide such a model that can be used for comparing air filters using information currently available for all air filtration products. The model will be compared against real filter installations at an airport to ensure sufficient accuracy. The experiments conducted will also investigate the interaction of particles in the size range most harmful to humans (<1um) with commercial air filters. This will provide information on the effectiveness of air filters for capturing small particles. The chemical composition of these particles will be determined to provide further knowledge of the composition of particles that are passing through current air filters.