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Comment by syntaxing

3 years ago

A bit off tangent, but Blueair purifiers was the only brand where the output air was 0 PPM2.5 during wildfire season in the Bay Area (I have the $50 uncalibrated laser PPM sensor that purpleair uses so interpret this as you want). I tried Dyson, Winix, and making a V-shape DIY purifier with a vornado fan. Nothing was able to pull the indoor air below 15 besides Blueair so I recommend it to any of my family and friends.

As the article explains, unless you're using the purifier to filter the air coming into a space, small differences in the purifier output PM2.5 level don't matter. If the output has 99% lower PM2.5 than the input vs 100% lower, that's dwarfed by all the existing particles that the output is about to be mixed back in with.

  • The output air of 0 vs 15 ug/m^3 is not negligible difference, especially when the air outside is 200+ during wildfires. The reality is, the great output air of Blueair filter + 350 cfm CADR is a pretty big difference. My indoor ambient air was about 10-15 ug/m^3 compared to 30-40 using the other solutions.

    • The difference between an output of 0 and 15 ug/m^3 with an input of 200 ug/m^3 is negligible when considering the performance of the filter in the room. Let's walk it through, imagining 1000 CF room and a flow rate of 250 CFM, and comparing something that's 100% effective (0 ug/m^3 output) vs 92.5% effective (15 ug/m^3 output).

      At t=0 your room has a pm2.5 of 200 ug/m^3. At t=1min it has filtered 250 CF which is at either 0 or 15 ug/m^3. The remaining 750 CF is still at 200 ug/m^3. The air in the room is now either:

          100% effective: ( 0*250 + 200*750)/1000 = 150 ug/m^3
         92.5% effective: (15*250 + 200*750)/1000 = 154 ug/m^3
      

      Repeat this 20 times to simulate 20min and the room is at at 0.6 ug/m^3 in the first case vs 1.1 ug/m^3 for the second. The absolute difference is never larger than 7 ug/m^3 (at minute #4), and quickly becomes tiny.

      > the great output air of Blueair filter + 350 cfm CADR is a pretty big difference. My indoor ambient air was about 10-15 ug/m^3 compared to 30-40 using the other solutions.

      My guess is your other solutions had a much lower flow rate (and hence a much lower CADR). What are you comparing to?

Which line of Blueair are you using? I use Bluepure and I think they do a great job, but I don't have any instruments to measure their efficacy.

  • I have the Pure and the classic. The classic is actually pretty affordable and has a built-in PPM sensor which makes me lean towards it more than the Pure.