Nonthermal Plasma Assisted Photocatalytic Air Purification and Sterilization at Ambient Conditions

近几十年来，随着人类社会的工业化和城市化，空气污染已成为一个重大的环境健康问题，改善空气质量受到了相当多的关注，特别是在COVID-19大流行期间，由于其空气特性。改善室内空气质量变得尤为重要，因为在现代社会，人们在室内的时间（超过90%）明显多于在室外的时间。在这种情况下，各种各样的空气净化技术，如过滤、吸附、臭氧化、紫外光解、光催化氧化、冷等离子体和植物净化，已经被开发出来，但不幸的是，这些技术都不能有效地去除所有室内污染物，而且许多技术在运行过程中会产生不良的副产品。因此，提出了一种结合非热等离子体和光催化以及颗粒过滤的创新混合系统，以提供一站式的室内空气净化和灭菌解决方案。在等离子体、催化、生物、空气卫生和制造领域强大的学术-工业团队的支持下，该项目不仅旨在开发一种具有研究原型规模的高度集成且具有成本效益的空气净化器，以展示完全去除常见的挥发性有机化合物、病原体（如病毒、细菌和真菌）、无机污染物（如氮氧化物、一氧化碳和硫氧化物），固体颗粒物质具有可接受的寿命用于商业用途，同时也获得了深入了解非热等离子体光催化氧化和失活机制。该项目的成果将为工业合作伙伴提供完整的工程方案，使其能够立即进行产品设计和大规模制造所开发的空气净化器，一次空气处理能力高达2,400立方米/小时，为国内和国际市场提供高端空气卫生产品。从而进一步巩固了加拿大在环境创新和经济效益方面的领先地位，使加拿大成为一个更好的居住地。

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.