Latest Advancements of Clean Air Standards and Emerging Opportunities

Air filters clean the air that enters a building or the air that exits a building or process, protecting people and the environment. Therefore, the whole purpose of using a filter is to create sustainability. However, this also comes with the burden of the footprint of the filter itself during manufacturing, use and disposal. In the use phase, besides cleaning the air, it generates energy consumption of the ventilation system that moves the air through the filter. The energy consumption associated with an air filter is proportional to its pressure drop and depends on various operating parameters. It is not constant during the use phase varies with the air flow rate, humidity and the dust load of the filter. To select the right type of filter for a given application, the user needs to get reliable data to compare filters one by one and at the same time wants to assess the performance of a specific filter in his application. Both tasks cannot be accomplished at the same time. To compare filters one to another, they must be tested with the same fixed set of parameters, such as volume flow, fan efficiency, amount of dust loading, etc. This results in data sets per filter that allow different filters to be compared, but are not directly related to the actual application. On the other hand, to evaluate the performance of a filter in a given application, it must be tested with the same operating parameters as in the application. In this case, comparison with other filters tested under different conditions is not possible. To address this dilemma, Eurovent has defined a set of guidelines that either allow the filter comparison needed also for an energy efficiency rating system, or allow the assessment of the filter performance for a given application.