Does anyone know of any air filter methods that also demand very little resources?
I've been looking air purifiers in the shops, but when I see how many Watts most of them use on an hourly basis, and imagine running them 24 hours a day, it makes me wonder if there are any alternatives.
Several of my friends in Beijing have switched from portable air purifiers (e.g. IQAir HealthPro 250) to air purifiers that are attached to a window via a wide, flexible pipe.
These have a few advantages over traditional air purifiers:
1) No CO2 build-up.
Although all your windows are still shut, you're still pulling in fresh air from the outside via the hole in the window where the air purifier is installed. With traditional air purifiers, you need to open your windows for ~20 mins every 12 hours, to replenish your oxygen supply, but this also brings in pollutants.
2) All air entering the apartment is filtered.
Because the installed air purifier is pulling in air from the outside, and not just filtering air that's already in the apartment, it creates positive air pressure. This means that, where there are small areas with air leakage (e.g. suspended ceilings, cavities around heating units, imperfect seals on outside door), air is pushed out of the apartment, instead of polluting air being pulled in.
3) Single large unit for the whole apartment, instead of one unit per room.
I guess that, due to these advantages, the total amount of air that these purifiers need to pump in a day is much less than the regular ones. I haven't verified this. But our friends' installed units are definitely less noisy than 5 x IQAir machines.
Reading this post makes me feel like I'm living in some kind of dystopian scifi novel.
One interesting side effect of the recent Extinction Rebellion protests that stopped all traffic in large parts of London is how much more aware of the sheer volume of ICE traffic I am now, and how unbelievable it now feels that we allow it.
It doesn't help much unless there are many plants in a small contained area.
All the studies, including NASA ones, are done in sealed environments, as soon as you test them in real life you basically need to fill the room with plants.
Air filtering is hard to do right, consume a lot of energy and/or requires filters that have to be changed often. If we were logical we'd straight up ban cars in our city centers, which would remove most of the pollution in 1st world countries' cities.
The NASA study shows that plants remove a small amount of certain chemicals from the air. A 1500 sq ft home would need around 400 large plants to remove most of the tested chemicals–something that is not practical. Reports that list the best plants for the job are probably not valid lists. The microbes in the soil of the pot are more efficient at removing chemicals than the plants themselves.
Reporters who write about the ability of plants to remove pollutants either have not read the reference they quote (most likely case) or they have cherry picked the data that suits their story. Most have probably just reported what previous reporters said. The original reporters made the following mistakes:
ignored the lab conditions used to carry out the experiments
used the very best number in the report, ie 90%, and extrapolated it to all plants and all chemicals
extrapolated results for 3 chemicals to “all pollutants”
completely ignored the scientists own conclusions, namely microbes and charcoal filters remove most of the chemicals
You can look into electrostatic precipitators (aka air ionizer purifier). It is very energy efficient. You don't have to replace the filters only clean the collecting plate once a month. Drawback : depending on the construction there may be some ozone production.
I've been looking air purifiers in the shops, but when I see how many Watts most of them use on an hourly basis, and imagine running them 24 hours a day, it makes me wonder if there are any alternatives.
Would growing a lot of plants help perhaps?