Air treatment performance and toxicity studies of supported ionic liquids

Abstract

People’s awareness of air quality has continuously grow since air pollutant problem become severe. Among the commercial air purifier in the market, most types are based on HEPA filter. My topic will focus on optimizing the existed indoor air purifier. Since ionic liquid is a good adsorbent, supported ionic liquid on HEPA filter is studied based on biosafety test, filtration test and field test. Dual layer coating is applied in sample preparation. Filtration efficiency towards total ultrafine particle increased 3%-5% after optimization while pressure drop remains the same. EMIM-BF₄, BMIM-BF₄, BMIM-I have less influence on human lung cell A549 and kidney cell MDCK, they are potentially safe to be applied in the HEPA filters. After a comprehensive property comparison, BMIM-I is selected to conduct field test. Under classroom environment, purifiers with dual layer coating can reduce particle matters up to 80%, and efficiency increase around 50% compare to commercial filters. The growth of microbes in the coated filter is inhibited 90% when less than 10 people stay. When users increase to 30 or more, 2 purifiers is not enough to inhibit all microbe growth. BMIM-I also found to have sporicidal property towards Aspergillus niger and Penicillin chrysogenum. Decay test shows that both pure filter and coated filter will have worse performance during high temperature and accumulation of vapor.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology