We validated the use of the mass balance model to determine the effectiveness of portable air purifiers in removing ultrafine (<0.10 ìm) and submicrometer particles (0.10-0.53 ìm) in an apartment. We evaluated two identical portable air purifiers, equipped with high efficiency particulate air filters, for their performance under three different air flow settings and three target air exchange rates: 0.60, 0.90, and 1.20 h(-1). We subsequently used a mixed effects model to estimate the slope between the measured and modeled effectiveness by particle size. Our study showed that effectiveness was highly particle size-dependent. For example, at the lowest target air exchange rate, it ranged from 0.33 to 0.56, 0.51 to 0.75, and 0.60 to 0.81 for the three air purifier flow settings, respectively. Our findings suggested that filtration was the dominant removal mechanism for submicrometer particles, whereas deposition could play a more important role in ultrafine particle removal. We found reasonable agreement between measured and modeled effectiveness with size-resolved slopes ranging from 1.11 ± 0.06 to 1.25 ± 0.07 (mean ± SE), except for particles <35 nm. Our study design can be applied to investigate the performances of other portable air purifiers as well as the influences of various parameters on effectiveness in different residential settings.
Air Filters Air Pollution, Indoor