1 Topic by Marcus (edited by Marcus 2006-03-12 03:25:36)

  • Registered: 2004-10-15

Topic: Negative ions and activated oxygen - are these ok? (Dust removal)

We have lived in our current house for about 8 months now...and we have noticed a tremendous amount of dust in the house.  This isn't the typical type dust, but is a very fine grey powder.  It is so bad that if we clean the dust off a table, it will be coated again within 6 hours or so.  It is particually bad on computer moniters etc (even LCD "non static" ones).  Clean the dust off the monitors and it appears again within an hour.

We live on a bit of a hill...if you go to the end of our road, in the distance - about 3 miles as the crow flys you can see a rather large factory.  This factory produces plaster board.  We think this is probably what we are getting in the house.  We have asked our neighbours if they have the same sort of dust.  Some say yes, others don't seem to have noticed (which doesn't mean much).

Anyway we decided to get some sort of Air Filter...at the moment I don't want to pay much for one until I know that it works.  I looked at the Sharp Plasmaclusters and they are about  £500 so far too much.  Then I came across http://www.dry-it-out.com/index.php?mai … cts_id=125

These are very small and cheap.  Hopefully they will do the job.

Anyway after all that my question is this:  The air purifier uses negative ions and activated oxygen in order to remove particles from the air.  Is this method in anyway harmful?  I don't want to  make the situation worse basically.  I don't know a lot about science, so I wanted to know what these are about, and if they are ok within our immediate environment.

Also does anyone else have any experience with these sorts of things?  If so, what are they like?

Alternatively as the item above is rather small (maybe not very effective?)  I have looked at a few alternatives like http://www.4air.co.uk/product_info.php/ … win-Motors


Cheers...

Thought Manifestation

Marcus's Website

2 Reply by whywhywhy (edited by whywhywhy 2006-03-12 06:20:21)

  • From: LA
  • Registered: 2005-09-18

Re: Negative ions and activated oxygen - are these ok? (Dust removal)

Hi Marcus,

I do not think there is any danger in using electrostatic precipitators to remove dust.  The dust particle is charged as in enters the unit and then is attracted to the plate charged with an opposite charge.  The dust collects on the plate and then is rendered neutral (electrically speaking).  These type of systems work ok when installed in your HVAC system but are rather expensive.  The small units you are looking at take a long time to process one house volume one time.  Just not practical to me.  The other technology, HEPA filters, basically forces air and dust to pass through a filter media (pore size in the low microns).  The filter media needs replacement every so often.

You may want to look around your house and determine entry points (places where dust is penetrating into your house).  Place one of the small units at the entry point and let it run for a few days.  Look at the amount of dust collected in the unit and the amount of dust on tables and other items around the house.  Major entry point must be determined if you are to use the smaller cheaper units.  I think major entry points are main doors, chimneys, and large windows.  Good luck!

Regards,

Lee

  • Registered: 2004-10-15

Re: Negative ions and activated oxygen - are these ok? (Dust removal)

Thanks very much for the reply.  After some thought we have decided to go for a unit that has 3 filter types built in.  HEPA, Carbon and Ionizer.  Hopefully it will do the trick...

Thought Manifestation

Marcus's Website