| Title: | Experimental investigation of the formaldehyde removal mechanisms in a dynamic botanical filtration system for indoor air purification |
| Address: | "School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China. Electronic address: jpei@tju.edu.cn. Building Energy and Environmental System Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Syracuse University, 263 Link Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2014.07.059 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1873-3336 (Electronic) 0304-3894 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Botanical filtration has been proved to be effective for indoor gas pollutant removal. To understand the roles of different transport, storage and removal mechanism by a dynamic botanical air filter, a series of experimental investigations were designed and conducted in this paper. Golden Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) plants was selected for test, and its original soil or activated/pebbles root bed was used in different test cases. It was found that flowing air through the root bed with microbes dynamically was essential to obtain meaningful formaldehyde removal efficiency. For static potted plant as normally place in rooms, the clean air delivery rate (CADR), which is often used to quantify the air cleaning ability of portable air cleaners, was only approximately 5.1m(3)/h per m(2) bed, while when dynamically with air flow through the bed, the CADR increased to approximately 233 m(3)/h per m(2) bed. The calculated CADR due to microbial activity is approximately 108 m(3)/h per m(2) bed. Moisture in the root bed also played an important role, both for maintaining a favorable living condition for microbes and for absorbing water-soluble compounds such as formaldehyde. The role of the plant was to introduce and maintain a favorable microbe community which effectively degraded the volatile organic compounds adsorbed or absorbed by the root bed. The presence of the plant increased the removal efficiency by a factor of two based on the results from the bench-scale root bed experiments" |
| Keywords: | "Adsorption Air Pollution, Indoor/*prevention & control *Araceae Formaldehyde/*isolation & purification Humidity *Microbial Consortia Plant Leaves Plant Roots Air cleaning Formaldehyde Microorganism Plant;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineWang, Zhiqiang Pei, Jingjing Zhang, Jensen S eng Evaluation Study Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Netherlands 2014/08/29 J Hazard Mater. 2014 Sep 15; 280:235-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2014.07.059. Epub 2014 Aug 12" |
