A wearable micro air cleaner for occupant-oriented indoor environmental controls

Abstract

Centralized ventilation could be problematic in situations where individuals require specific air quality conditions for infection control purposes. Among other mitigation methods, masks may cause thermal discomfort, and personalized ventilation with a fixed position could lose its function with user's movement. This study developed a novel wearable micro air cleaner to provide personalized protection in occupant breathing zone. The device needs to provide effective protection while maintaining thermal comfort, therefore this study conducted the tracer gas and human subject experiments to investigate the protective performance and thermal comfort impact of this device. By successfully balancing the component performance and size, this device achieved the protective efficiency of 77% for mouth breathing and 63% for nasal breathing. Additionally, this device offered satisfied thermal comfort experience for users at indoor air temperatures higher than 25 °C. To identify the actual thermal comfort requirements of the user, this study also developed data-driven thermal comfort models utilizing collected physiological data. By considering the heart rate variability (HRV), the performances achieved by the developed data-driven thermal comfort models were higher than 0.9. Overall, the wearable micro air cleaner could be an effective occupant-oriented indoor environmental control method to promise the individualized air quality without limiting user's activities.