Let us examine the air purifiers that will effectively work in animal care facilities, especially where animal grooming is offered. These units are generally portable, equipped with a serious of filters that include pre-filters with usually cleanable, sometimes washable materials for easy inspection and routine cleansing, pleated media filters, and sometimes carbon filters. These filters remove larger airborne pollutants in ever-decreasing sizes in order to protect that primary HEPA filter, which is relegated to the smallest, most damaging PM sizes and also to extend the HEPA filter service life. Although the inclusion of the carbon filter serves the primary role of odor capture, it also is useful at blocking some pollutants to further guard the HEPA from extraneous debris and just like the HEPA filter will require occasional replacement.
Although enjoying a longer service life, some marketers will try to claim a carbon filter can be rejuvenated by placing it in the sunlight. This is very misleading. Carbon encapsulates or traps odors, and to return the carbon to 100% capture capability, one would have to open the carbon casement, remove the carbon material, ship it to a special facility with ovens capable of reaching many hundreds of high-temperature degrees, which will then trigger release of encapsulated/captured offensive odors.
The carbon must then be repackaged for air scrubber use. At best, a 15% rejuvenation or odor release is more truthful, and that may only be possible in an extremely dry and hot location. Not too many grooming shops are found in the Gobi, Mojave, or Sahara desert areas to make it economically feasible or even consider this a practical way to save money, since carbon filters in grooming salon use and found in restoration industry units are sufficiently large enough to extend service life by 2-3 times that of their companion HEPA filters with a marginal, inexpensive replacement cost.
The sizes of the filters, and the quality and quantity of the filter material, are in reality the important issues as regards replacement frequency and system value. Filters to meet the indoor area’s size, the amount of pollutants present, and in the case of animal grooming, boarding, or care facilities, the high concentration of dangerous, unhealthful particulate matter (PM) created by bathing/grooming animals must be the determining factors in selecting your air purification system. The health, safety, and comfort of animal care personnel and future business success requires salon owners’ careful consideration in the selection of the right air purifier.
Lesser filter sizes and types are very common when researching current market air purifiers and are not suitable for animal care facility use. The reasons for this will vary and be almost impossible to pin down. Generally speaking, it appears that price points and marketing to the residential, small-room, lower-impacted market dominates today’s air purifier market. However, filters in “passive,” capture and technology used in active, “kill” systems do have some things that are common and should be considered when selecting either method of airborne purification, and that is the following:
- Room area size – volume of air to be circulated
- Effectiveness or ability to cleanse all the air volume sufficiently
- Effectiveness of particulate matter (PM) captures, especially below 2.5 microns (µm) in high PM saturation locales
- Motor type and suitability for processing effectively the desired pollutants from the space
- Purifier systems engineered to treat the room/area to meet recognized standards for air turnover
- Systems with minimum leakage and maximum efficiency through proven manufacturing standards and materials utilized to meet commercial use requirements with certified results backed by scientific studies and regulatory agency recognition
Air purifiers generally are equipped with some type of fan/motor speed control which is quite useful for noise modulation. Slower speeds also generally increase overall capture efficiency, especially in systems not equipped with the larger, thicker HEPA filters, which are found in most commercial air purifiers, such as those found in the restoration industry. These restoration units generally come equipped with system airflow technology which notifies the user when airflow through the filters is not adequate for optimal air cleansing efficiency. A check of filters for first blockage and possible replacement may be necessary prior to replacement.
Commercial air purifiers use the newest, most efficient motor technologies designed to move greater volumes of air (cubic feet per minute) of air than retail units. These high-torque motors were developed to use far less electricity, have much longer service life with little to no maintenance requirements, and that produce little to zero added heat in a room’s temperature. Leading appliance manufactures are rapidly adopting use of these motors for their top performance models.
The big challenge in adapting these motors for use in our best air purification units is that the above-mentioned manufacturing process must meet the highest standards utilizing first-rate materials and manufacturing processes to produce the optimum design requirements that stress the highest percentage of air is filtered with minimal system leakage. A high volume of air passing through a commercial air purifier unit wants to find the easiest path of escape. Just like water flowing through a garden hose, when closing down the volume flow at the nozzle to achieve greater distance, the amount of water/volume coming from the faucet is still the same, and as we soon discover, connections at faucet and nozzle and the various washers found in between weren’t quite as tight as we had hoped.
High-air-volume purifiers are the same, except the air that leaks is very, very limited, requiring far fewer air turnovers to meet the air quality filtration standards, while more effectively removing the most dangerous size pollutants that can cause the greatest number of health challenges.
Air purifiers’ performance in meeting a workspace threat to one’s health leaves very little room for second-best solutions, especially in today’s growing airborne challenges targeted at indoor environments. The most dangerous and invasive culprit is found in particulate matter (PM) and has been identified by the US EPA as a more serious threat indoors than outdoors. The EPA has not sponsored a study to investigate the indoor subject, and it’s just a matter of time before the EPA will be pushed to examine this and subsequent requirements for mandatory indoor air solutions.
From long experience in the animal care field, I can think of no more appropriate venue for air quality control remediation than our industry, and the first step in improvement and eventual solution is the selection and consistent use of an effective/efficient air purification system.
Catch our next posting with air purification Salon Equipment Evaluation Standard (SEES)recommendations for animal care and grooming salon air purification equipment.
Till Next Time,
-The Professor