Hybrid Bead Air Filters with Low Pressure Drops at a High Flow Rate for the Removal of Particulate Matter and HCHO

Hee Ju Kim; Ye Jin Kim; Yu Jin Seo; Ji Hee Choi; Hye Young Koo; Won San Choi

doi:10.3390/polym14030422

Hybrid Bead Air Filters with Low Pressure Drops at a High Flow Rate for the Removal of Particulate Matter and HCHO

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Jan 21;14(3):422. doi: 10.3390/polym14030422.

Authors

Hee Ju Kim¹, Ye Jin Kim¹, Yu Jin Seo¹, Ji Hee Choi¹, Hye Young Koo², Won San Choi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Hanbat National University, 125 Dongseodaero, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-719, Korea.
² Functional Composite Materials Research Center, Jeonbuk Institute of Advanced Composite Materials, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), 92 Chudong-ro, Bongdong-eup, Wanju-gun, Seoul 136-791, Korea.

Abstract

A tower air filtration system was designed in which bead air filters (BAFs) were actively rotated by a fan motor to remove particulate matter (PM) or HCHO gas. Three types of BAF, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, and hybrid, were prepared and compared for the removal of PM and HCHO gas. A tower air filtration system loaded with hybrid BAFs purified 3.73 L of PM (2500 μg/m³ PM_2.5) at a high flow rate of 3.4 m/s with high removal efficiency (99.4% for PM_2.5) and a low pressure drop (19 Pa) in 6 min. Against our expectations, the PM_2.5 removal efficiency slightly increased as the air velocity increased. The hybrid BAF-200 showed excellent recyclability up to 50 cycles with high removal efficiencies (99.4-93.4% for PM_2.5). Furthermore, hydrophilic BAF-200 could permanently remove 3.73 L of HCHO gas (4.87 ppm) and return the atmosphere to safe levels (0.41-0.31 ppm) within 60 min without any desorption of HCHO gas.

Keywords: HCHO; air filters; particulate matters; pressure drop; removal efficiency.