Ionization Impact on the Air Cleaning Efficiency in the Interior

• Published in: Measurement science review Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 156 - 166
• Main Authors: Černecký, Jozef, Valentová, Karina, Pivarčiová, Elena, Božek, Pavol
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bratislava De Gruyter Open 01.08.2015; De Gruyter Poland; Sciendo
• Subjects: cigarette smoke; Ionization; particle removal efficiency; particular matters; positive and negative ions
• ISSN: 1335-8871; 1335-8871
• DOI: 10.1515/msr-2015-0023

The paper deals with ionization impact on efficient cleaning of air in a measuring chamber which has been cleaned and closed against any outer impacts (e.g. impurities, dust from another room, human odours). Smoking has an impact on the number of positive and negative ions including the concentration of particulate matter PM10. We investigated the ion concentration according to the presence of cigarette smoke in the room and according to the change of lit cigarette distance from the supply of ionized air. Due to the experiment there was simulated smoking at the relative air humidity φ = 37 % and φ = 39 % and temperature of 20 °C in the room. Increased PM concentrations were caused only by cigarette smoke pollution or more precisely by artificially created higher humidity in the measuring room excluding ambient environment impacts. The aim of the experiments was to prove influence of ionization on the elimination of cigarette smoke. The measurements showed that the highest efficiency of PM particulate removal was achieved when the distance of smoking cigarettes from ionization source was 3 m and the air humidity was 39 %. The consequent increase of the distance of smoking cigarettes from the ionization source significantly decreased the efficiency of particle removal. The difference between ionized and natural air is minimal at the bigger distance.