Republic of the Philippines

BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY

BatStateU Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

Chemical and Food Engineering Department

Activity No. 1
STRUCTURES-BASED AND INTERACTION-BASED APPROACHES
TO AIR FILTRATION TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT

Submitted by:
Esmeria, Jon Vaughn I.

Submitted to:

Engr. Nico John Rosaldo Abratique, M.

Date:
12-2-21
ABSTRACT:

According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) estimate, air pollution has
become the world's single greatest environmental health risk, responsible for around 7 million
deaths in 2012. The new data also shows a greater association between indoor and outdoor air
pollution exposure and cardiovascular disorders including strokes and ischemic heart disease, as
well as air pollution and cancer. Because of its extensive and negative consequences on humans,
increasing air pollution has sparked significant public health concerns. The impact of air
pollution in the development of respiratory disorders, such as acute respiratory infections and
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is well established. According to the WHO factsheet on
HAP and health, exposure to home air pollution causes 3.8 million premature deaths per year,
including stroke, ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and
lung cancer. One of the proposed ways for improving indoor air quality is to use air cleaners and
filters. This review examines the impact of air pollutants, with an emphasis on interior air
pollutants, as well as the benefits of air filters in improving indoor air quality. While both indoor
and outdoor pollution have an influence on health, new data on the impact of household indoor
pollutants (HAP) is concerning. As a result, the advancement of air filtration technology has
gained prominence as a practical and viable alternative. Many efforts have been made in the past
to enhance air filtration technology in order to overcome the trade-off connection between
filtration efficiency and pressure drop. This paper addresses current advances in air filtration
technology with regard to two separate tactics, the first focusing on optimizing filter structure
and the second on boosting electrostatic interaction. Three diverse structure-based strategies are
covered, including fiber morphology modification, component hybridization, and multilayer
stacking, followed by three interaction-based ways that function by imposing charge, such as
induction charging, triboelectric charging, and corona charging. Furthermore, two forms of
active air filtration applications are thoroughly addressed as interaction-based techniques. The
analysis continues by examining the existing limits and future potential of air filtration
technology, including applications other than air purification.
INTRODUCTION:

Every day, 10,000 litres of air enter the lungs to extract 420 litres of oxygen, which is
critical for human existence and function. The quality of the air we breathe affects the health of
our lungs as well as other organs. Indeed, clean air is seen as a basic prerequisite for human
health and well-being. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 7 million
people died in 2012 as a result of air pollution exposure, proving that air pollution is now the
world's leading single environmental health risk. Pollution has a well-known negative influence
on respiratory health. According to the WHO factsheet, there is a greater association between air
pollution exposure and cardiovascular disorders such as strokes and ischemic heart disease, as
well as between air pollution and cancer. The research on the negative effects of air pollution on
the brain, cognition, and behavior has also grown tremendously in the previous decade.
However, air pollution continues to be a major hazard to human health across the world. The
multicenter European Project of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE) study,
encompassing 367,251 people and one of the largest continuing studies begun to investigate the
impact of air pollution on population health, has generated considerable data over the previous 6
years. The study's findings, which have been published in over 25 journals, provide insight into
the relationship between air pollution and increases in cerebrovascular and coronary events, as
well as an increase in respiratory disorders. In the recently published analysis of the largest ever
population-based study on the distribution, causes, and risk factors of a wide range of major
diseases around the world, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, exposure to air pollution
and particulate matter was ranked as one of the top ten risk factors for disease. More importantly,
household air pollution (HAP) was the primary risk factor for ill health in South Asia. According
to the WHO Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality, the quality of air inside homes, offices, schools,
day care centers, public buildings, health care facilities, and other private and public buildings
where people spend a significant amount of their time is an important determinant of healthy
living and well-being. Hazardous compounds released by buildings, construction materials, and
indoor equipment, as well as human activities indoors, such as fuel combustion for cooking or
heating, cause a wide range of health issues.
 Anthropogenic air pollution has a considerable impact on public health in most
industrialized nations. Particulate matter (PM), which are microscale airborne contaminants, has
been identified as a significant risk factor for early death. The most well-known cause of harmful
health consequences caused by PM is toxicological effects related with direct inhalation of PM.
PM is often a combination of numerous harmful compounds, such as metals, nitrates, and
sulfates, all of which are poisonous to cells and can cause cell death or organ failure.
Furthermore, particles with aerodynamic dimensions less than 2.5 m (PM2.5) can readily enter
the circulatory system, offering a greater health risk. These negative health effects of PM have
generated concerns regarding the toxicological implications of PM inhalation. Other critical PM-
related issues are less well understood by the general public than those caused by direct
inhalation. Fine particles, for example, have a high surface-to-volume ratio and can adsorb virus-
laden aerosols, hence facilitating the spread of numerous viral diseases. This PM-related problem
has lately attracted attention as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA was found on the surface of PM from public places. Furthermore, an
ecological research found that even a minor increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 might
cause a large increase in COVID-19 mortality.

Given the current circumstances, controlling air quality has become a key part of public
health and the long-term growth of mankind. The most popular approach for air purification is
PM filtration, which involves eliminating airborne particles using filtering material. Membranes
and fibrous materials have been proposed as air filter materials. These materials are evaluated
using several performance criteria, one of which is filtration efficiency, which represents the
efficiency with which particles are eliminated. However, pressure drop is a crucial statistic that
relates to how much energy is required to filter dirty air. Based on these characteristics, fibrous
materials have been the most extensively employed due to their extremely porous architectures
that allow for airflow while successfully eliminating particulates. However, there are still issues
with traditional air filters. That is, these materials often have small holes and huge thicknesses,
resulting in high filtration efficiencies but significant pressure drops and overall poor filtering
performance. Until recently, significant attempts have been made to overcome this trade-off
connection in two ways: structure-based techniques and interaction-based approaches. Diffusion,
interception, impaction, gravity settling, and electrostatic attraction are the five types of filtering
processes for particle capture described in basic filtration theory. Except for electrostatic
attraction, all techniques are classified as mechanical filtering mechanisms since they rely
heavily on the structure of the air filter to physically remove PM by interfering with the laminar
air flows/streamlines that pass through the material. Meanwhile, electrostatic attraction relies on
electrostatic interactions between particles and filter medium rather than changing the air flow.
Thus, adjusting the filter structure and boosting electrostatic interactions can not only balance
filtration efficiency and pressure drop, but also increase filtering performance. A thorough
knowledge of the structure and electrostatic interactions on filtering characteristics is expected to
give essential answers for realizing high-performance air filters.

DISCUSSION:

For this review, we will first describe the fundamental ideas and operating principles of
air filtration. We completely outline technical advances in air filtration by categorizing them into
two unique techniques, structure- and interaction-based approaches. The part on structure-based
techniques is separated into three subsections: morphological alteration, components
hybridization, and multilayer stacking. The part on interaction-based methods expands on current
research into techniques that impose charge for filtering, such as induction charging, triboelectric
charging, and corona charging. Newly suggested active air filtering applications are thoroughly
examined. We will also address the existing limits and future potential of air filtration systems.
First is we need to know PM’s definition, Particulate matter (PM) is categorised depending on
particle diameter. Particles bigger than 2.5 m are classified as coarse particles, while those
between 0.1 and 2.5 m are classified as fine particles, and those smaller than 0.1 m are classified
as ultrafine dust. PM is made up of both solid and liquid particles that come from sources such as
car exhaust, road dust, smokestacks, forest fires, windblown soil, volcanic emissions, and sea
spray. The majority of coarse particles are formed by soil or sea salts, whereas fine and ultrafine
particles are mostly formed by the burning of fossil fuels. Filtration efficiency and pressure drop
are two important metrics to consider when assessing filter effectiveness. It is where n is the
filtering efficiency and C up and C down denote the particle concentrations upstream and
downstream of the filter, respectively. Because a difference in sampling velocity and airflow
velocity might affect the concentration of sampled particles, sampling must be done carefully
and in an isokinetic way. The pressure drop is caused by flow resistance in the filter medium and
is thus measured near the filter's front and back ends. The quality factor (QF) combines filtration
efficiency and pressure drop, as shown below, where P is the pressure drop through the filter and
is the filtering efficiency.
As for Filtration mechanism the Mechanical filtering processes are mostly caused by the
relative departure of particles from streamlines around fibers. Thus, accurate prediction of
particle capture behavior necessitates knowledge of air flow characteristics such as the Reynolds
number (Re), Knudsen number (Kn), and Kuwabara hydrodynamic factor (Ku), which determine
whether the flow is laminar or turbulent, in a slip or continuum regime, and the effect of flow
interference, respectively. There are four types of particulates filtration mechanism, The
representative PM filtration mechanisms: impaction, interception, diffusion, electrostatic
attraction. Inertial impaction occurs when particles moving in an airstream are unable to alter
their direction due to rapidly deforming streamlines. Because of this shortcoming, particles divert
from pre-planned trajectories and directly contact the fiber surface. The inertial impaction
mechanism, which is based on the particle's inertia, is the dominating filtering process for
relatively big particles. In rare circumstances, interception can occur when particle-carrying
streamlines are too close to the surface of a fiber. Particles having radii greater than the distance
between the matching streamline and fiber surface are specifically caught by the fiber.

Electrostatic filtration systems rely on electrostatic charges between particles and filtering
material. Depending on the charged state of the fiber and particle, there are normally two types
of electrostatic forces that occur in the electrostatic capture of PM, Coulomb and
dielectrophoretic forces. Coulombic forces, for example, attract unipolar or bipolar charged
particles and fibers. In another scenario, when both particles or fibers are in a neutral state,
charging one polarizes the other, causing attraction through dielectrophoretic forces. Notably, the
electrostatic mechanism has no effect on the airstream and, as a result, can improve filtering
efficiency without affecting air permeability. Despite the fact that various theoretical models for
electrostatic filtering have been suggested, it remains challenging to exactly anticipate capture
behaviors by electrostatic attraction since it is impossible to quantify charge distributions at
microscopic levels. Despite these challenges, the dielectric constants of the fiber and particle are
obviously important in influencing charge distribution and particle capture effectiveness via the
electrostatic process. Mechanical filtering systems, as seen above, may be represented as a
function of dimensionless numbers defined by structural factors. Furthermore, the pressure drop
may be represented as a function of fiber packing density and filter thickness L. As a result,
regulating and improving these structural features opens the door to designing high-performance
air filters. Fiber diameter, for example, is a fundamental design feature in an air filter that has
received the most attention due to its significant impact on filter structure. Nanofibers, or fibers
having submicron dimensions, are especially desired because they outperform microfibers in a
variety of ways, including filtration efficiency, most penetrating particle size (MPPS), and slip
effects. This section summarizes and discusses advanced strategies for optimizing various
structural aspects of air filters, including as shape, composition, and layer design.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion our ecosystem is facing a hazardous pollution, especially air that we are
trying to solve for many years. Despite the fast increase in environmental contaminants, the
causal mechanisms leading to harmful health impacts are frequently complicated and poorly
understood. In addition Children, the elderly, and women are the most sensitive to the possible
health impacts of indoor air pollution since they spend more time at home. Particulate
contaminants endanger human health by producing a wide range of ailments, the majority of
which affect the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Furthermore, the high density of PM
exacerbates the propagation of viruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
We review particle filtration strategies that aim to ameliorate PM-related difficulties, with
an emphasis on two filtration mechanisms: structure-based filtration and interaction-based
filtration. To improve the mechanical filtering of particle matter, advanced air filters with
surface-modified fibers, hybrid architectures, and several layers have been created. Furthermore,
by utilizing various types of electret materials or external energy sources, electrostatic
interactions between particles and filter medium might be amplified. Notably, filters produced
using these approaches outperform most commercial filters in terms of filtering efficiency and
flow resistance. However, additional conditions must be met in order to overcome the existing
filter technology's numerous restrictions.