Mar 06 2009
What is an Air Purifier?
What is an Air Purifier? What does it do?
Okay, let’s start from the beginning. First order of business; let’s find out what an air purifier is.
Simply put an air purifier is a device that cleans the air. That’s it, that’s all it’s supposed to do. But wait, the air doesn’t seem dirty, what’s there to clean?
In the air there are small particles mostly to small to see. These particles float around until they find a place to rest, your furniture, your floor or your lungs. Sometimes you can see these little specks of dust. Shine a strong light through a dim room and you’ll see tiny specks floating in the air, these are the contaminants. This is what an air purifier will get rid of.
The most common way of cleaning the air is running it through a filter. In most air purifiers a fan will suck up air from one part of the air cleaner and blow it out another part. Between the intake and output sides there lies the filter. There are many different types of filters but they all have some commonality. Every filter is a tightly interlock collection of fibers that trap particles. Either a particle will be too large to make it through the fibers or it will imbed itself inside a fiber.
The fan inside the air cleaner is responsible for moving the air around the room. An air purifier would not be of much use if it couldn’t circulate air around the entire room it is in. An air purifier must move the air in order to clean it and the fan is what moves the air. Some fans are more powerful than others and can move more air. Some fans air nosier than others and can disturb the occupants of the room.
So now we have the basic of what makes up an air purifier. There is an intake port and output port, a fan and a filter. These are the basics that you will find in any air purifier. In the following posts we’ll get into the different kinds of filter and fans as well as other technologies that are used in air purifiers.
