This project would take 2-3 days to filter the volume of air in a 1,000 sq foot apartment... which is to say it would do nothing of significance. To be effective, you want to change the air something closer to once every 30 minutes.
A small DIY air purifier
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Re: A small DIY air purifier
#112This project would take 2-3 days to filter the volume of air in a 1,000 sq foot apartment... which is to say it would do nothing of significance. To be effective, you want to change the air something closer to once every 30 minutes.
I agree that it would be silly to expect this thing to purify air for an entire living space.
With a few adaptations, however, it might be good as a soldering station fume extractor. These already exist and are little more than a tube, a fan, and a filter (usually with activated charcoal).
The nice thing about this one is that it's circular and could easily adapt to a flexible tube and you could perhaps stack fans for greater sucking power.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#113Is a filter or an ionizer better for smoke? https://hackaday.com/2020/01/12/diy-ionizer-clears-the-air-o...
Many (most?) proper ones use a combination of a coarse washable pre-filter, charcoal, HEPA, and ionizer.
Which makes sense, since they all basically do different things.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#114OP: Do you think https://www.instructables.com/ would have been a better place for this than Github.com ?
Great effort!
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#115Not sure what the point is when it costs $100 and is magnitudes smaller and less powerful than a proper one which runs at $200-300 - an upfront cost which is dwarfed in the long run by filter replacements, as would be the case here.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, they definitely do, although to a various degree of effectiveness. If you get a Xiaomi Mi Air 2, for example, it will be very effective. If you get a Dyson fanless thing, not so much. In general, there is no escaping physics: you need to move a large quantity of air through something that traps dust particles. The low-tech solution of a fan and a HEPA filter is a very good one, but I would suggest getting a filt…
> If you get a Dyson fanless thing, not so much. Any sources on that? I have one and I swear by it. They have a glass HEPA filter and a carbon filter. I'm not quite sure how much air it moves but it's enough to scrub the air of my two floors apartment when someone smokes indoor. It's not really fanless per-se, it's a turbine in the base. You are simply moving the blades down into the base and away from the output are…
Yeah the Dyson purifiers are awesome.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#117I’m all for DIY, but this looks horribly underpowered to do anything against major pollution.
I’ve got a Honeywell that’s $150 and it must have 20-40x the throughput of this little thing.
https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/honeywell-1700...
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want this to actually work, you take a box fan, and 2 filters. You make a triangle and then some cardboard on the top and bottom to fill the gap. This increases surface area and reduces the stress on the fan due to pressure drop. Slapping a filter directly on to the box fan is going to kill the fan very quickly. https://i.imgur.com/SX1RloH.jpg
Clarification: triangle goes on the in or out side of the fan?
Put it on the intake. It will keep the fan clean.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#119May as well ask here: do air purifiers have meaningful health benefits for generally healthy people? I get that you change the filter and it's filled with grey muck and that's gross, and that the filters change particulate content in air, but is there good evidence that doing those things improves health if you don't already have some sensitivity to air pollution or live in a highly polluted area? I don't know if "Lu…
I would assume the majority of people (in the US, anyway) are already filtering their air enough through their central air to make any additional "room-sized" filtering negligible. Similarly they make some very dense HVAC filters if standard ones aren't catching the level of particles you need, so I'm not sure what the purpose of these filter-fan things are for most people.
>Similarly they make some very dense HVAC filters if standard ones aren't catching the level of particles you need, so I'm not sure what the purpose of these filter-fan things are for most people.
These are a scam, especially all those 3M filtrete ones. Air handlers in homes and most other HVAC applications are not made to also serve as tiny particulate filters, so it will make the whole HVAC system slow or even stop since it won't be able to get the air flow it needs to function.
Re: A small DIY air purifier
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would assume the majority of people (in the US, anyway) are already filtering their air enough through their central air to make any additional "room-sized" filtering negligible. Similarly they make some very dense HVAC filters if standard ones aren't catching the level of particles you need, so I'm not sure what the purpose of these filter-fan things are for most people.
That assumes that your HVAC runs regularly. Apart from deep summer and winter we rarely run our house HVAC. We have a filter that runs constantly at low speed because we have pets and without the filter there would be issues for members of my family.
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