A New Testing Facility to Investigate the Removal Processes of Indoor Air Contaminants with Different Cleaning Technologies and to Better Assess and Exploit Their Performances

Piero Ciccioli,Enrica Donati,Ettore Guerriero,Paolo Svaldi,Maria Adelaide Iannelli,Paolo Ciccioli,Laura Lilla,Carmine Rinaldi,Emanuele Pallozzi,Rosanna Mabilia

doi:10.3390/environments9010003

Abstract

Residential air cleaners exploiting different technologies re commonly used today to remove air contaminants from indoor environments. Different methods have been developed in the USA and Europe to test their efficiency. The one used in the USA provides a more comprehensive view of indoor processes, because testing is performed in a large simulation chamber (28.5 m3), using anthropogenic emissions, such as cigarette smoke, to generate pollution. Testing rooms are also important to investigate new removal technologies, or to improve them. Since no such testing facilities exist in Italy, one of 12.4 m3 was built in which cigarette smoke, resuspended dust from agricultural soil and, for the first time, diesel exhaust emissions were used to generate indoor pollution. Performances were tested with two air cleaning systems, exploiting completely different removal technologies. Accurate values of decay rates of indoor pollutants were obtained using a suite of on-line and out-of-line monitors for the measurement of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and some inorganic gases. Proton-transfer mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) provided an almost real-time detection of several VOCs and H2S, at trace levels (0.01 ppbv). A method using a common in vitro bioassay was developed to assess the ability of air cleaners to remove indoor toxic substances.

Highlights

Indoor pollution is widely recognized as an important source of possible health risk for humans, because of the high levels of different pollutants that reach indoors, and the long exposure of humans to them [1]
Since diesel exhaust emission has never been used before to assess the performances of air cleaners; in this paper, a specific section has been devoted to the experiments performed in the testing room with this source
The study performed on the GIOEL air cleaner provides a good example of the way in which the testing room was used to obtain information on the processes responsible for the removal of indoor contaminants, and how it was exploited for other applications

Summary

Introduction

Indoor pollution is widely recognized as an important source of possible health risk for humans, because of the high levels of different pollutants that reach indoors, and the long exposure of humans to them [1]. Environments 2022, 9, 3 indoors [3,4] This effect can be observed in areas in which the emission of atmospheric pollutants is high, and not adequately dispersed in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) [5]. In this respect, worse are the conditions in which high outdoor emission is combined with persisting atmospheric stability, in which the height of the mixing layer is more than one order of magnitude lower than at noon [6]. Under high pressure summer conditions, the indoor diffusion of photochemical oxidants can increase the levels of indoor pollution, by letting the environment behave as a photochemical smog reactor [10,11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion