PERFORMANCE OF GAS PHASE FILTERS - FULL SCALE TEST FACILITY

Improving indoor air quality (IAQ) has received considerable attention over the past few decades. Applying air cleaning devices to filter particulates and gaseous contaminants is an effective way to reduce the contaminant levels and have a positive influence on the IAQ. Also, from an energy perspective, this method can be more efficient than diluting the indoor air with excessive outdoor air under certain conditions, i.e., contaminated outdoor air, hot and humid or extremely cold weathers. However, there is a lack of an acceptable approach to evaluate the performance of complete gaseous filtering systems for building applications. A full scale test facility was designed and constructed to investigate the removal effectiveness of commercial gas-phase air cleaning devices. The test rig was verified by conducting the system pre-qualification tests similar to those of ASHRAE standard 52.2. The tests were designed to quantitatively verify the reliability of the test rig for gas filter testing like velocity uniformity, uniform dispersion of challenge contaminants, temperature and humidity control. As a final validation, a commercial gas filter was tested for toluene removal. This paper presents the details of the design and prequalification tests of the developed test rig as well as the experimental results of a v-shape module filled with a coconut shell-based granular activated carbon.