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Charged Air Filter

Air filter with a small battery built-in
 
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I was eating a baked potato for lunch one day when I got a strange unpleasent tingle in my mouth. I did some research on why that happened and found out that, because of the acidity of my saliva and the presence of 2 types of metal (metal fillings in teeth and a small piece of tin foil from potato), that I had effectively created a "wet cell" battery. Ok, good, now I know not to bite metal... good info to know. Well, I was surfing the random button and came across an idea (linked below) about electrostatically removing the dust in a room and just having to clean the electrostatic plate. Although The Big Bad Bubba proved it to be baked... it got me to thinking, what if we combined the two for a cheap easy way to filter the air in the house a bit better.

The idea is to take an existing fiberglass filter and weave small threads of steel in it, kind of like steel wool but smaller. Then, and this is the important part, have a strip of electrolytic paste on the side of the filter that touches the duct of the airflow intake. The steel threads connect to the paste and once the air/heat turns on the filter gets sucked to the duct, once this contact is made the battery is complete and starts to run. Now we have a fiberglass filter which has a magnet running through it catching extra dust/pollen/dander etc.

I know there are already electrostatic filters on the market. (links below) But they, at the cheapest I could find, cost about $65 USD. Ordinary fiberglass filters cost about $2 USD for a pack of 3. The fiberglass filters remove about 10-15% of the pollutants and the electrostatic ones are reusable and remove about 70-90% (depending on figures and brands) of the pollutants. Still, I don't have $65 USD to get one this week (or many other weeks as I'm a slave) but I do have enough to get the fiberglass ones 1.4 times a year and change them out quarterly. I'd expect the "new and improved" filter to cost more then the fiberglass ones, but considerable less the the elctrostatic ones. I'd also expect the new filter to pick up and filter more then just a piddly 10-15% that the fiberglass ones do. I think, with suitable percentages of pollutant removal, I could afford to spend $5-10 on a pack of these.

barnzenen, Mar 08 2004

"inspiration" for idea http://www.halfbake...0universal_20Duster
[barnzenen, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Electrostatic filter http://www.electros...trostaticfilter.htm
Basic info on electrostatic filters [barnzenen, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Decent cheap filter http://www.lifetime...trostaticfilter.com
$67 USD [barnzenen, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

A little better and more expensive filter http://www.riteair....0b78c0e&ai=00020002
$79 USD [barnzenen]

Basic battery info http://www.tpub.com.../css/h1011v2_62.htm [barnzenen, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Basic battery info http://www.tpub.com.../css/h1011v2_62.htm
[barnzenen, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Ionic Breeze Test http://www.wcpo.com...money/2060d4e5.html
Its crap. [Letsbuildafort, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

[link]






       The Sharper Image puts out a product like this called the "Ionic Breeze" which makes pretty radical claims of purifying the air you breathe. Tests show its crap - with linky.
Letsbuildafort, Mar 08 2004
  

       Those ionic "filters" are different in that they do not actually filter, but rather precipitate crap all over by imbuing it with charge. There used to be a big one of these in a greasy spoon I used to frequent, and there was a big greasy spot on the wall where the ions hit.   

       //Now we have a fiberglass filter which has a magnet running through it catching extra dust/pollen/dander etc.//   

       Not a magnet. What you propose would work, I think. The problem - your paste would be depleted and it would run out (like a battery). You would need to replace it, and eventually the cost savings would disappear. The only reason to use your method would be if you had no power source - yours has a built in battery. The high-end electrostatic filters are inexhaustible: you clean off the wires where the dust has stuck, plug them back in and you are good to go.
bungston, Mar 08 2004
  
      
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