Heo Jaeseok, Lee Jooyeon, Park Duckshin
Transportation Environmental Research Department, Korea Railroad Research Institute, Uiwang 16105, Korea.
Railway System Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34113, Korea.
Toxics. 2022 Oct 14;10(10):611. doi: 10.3390/toxics10100611.
Many studies have found that bioaerosols are harmful to humans. In particular, infectious viruses, such as the virus that causes COVID-19, are increasing. Therefore, the research on methods for reducing bioaerosols is becoming progressively more important. The purpose of this study was to improve the existing electrostatic precipitator, which generates high concentrations of ozone, by reducing bioaerosols effectively without significant ozone production. A brush-type ionizer was studied as a replacement for the existing electrostatic precipitator. The study, which was conducted at the laboratory scale, determined the amounts of ions generated with different ionizer materials (carbon, copper, and stainless steel) and voltages (-1, -2, and -3 kV), as well as it compared the virus inactivation efficiency under the various conditions. As a result, about two million ions were produced when a voltage of -3 kV was applied to all of the materials, and 99.9 ± 0.2% and 98.8 ± 0.6% virus inactivation efficiencies were confirmed in the cases of carbon and copper, respectively. In addition, an assessment of the effect of flow velocity confirmed that the inactivation efficiency decreased as the flow velocity increased. However, the results for the flow velocities of 0.2 and 0.4 m/s had similar trends. Therefore, this system can be used with flow velocities up to 0.4 m/s.
许多研究发现生物气溶胶对人类有害。特别是，传染性病毒，如导致新冠肺炎的病毒，正在增加。因此，减少生物气溶胶方法的研究变得越来越重要。本研究的目的是改进现有的静电除尘器，该除尘器会产生高浓度的臭氧，通过有效减少生物气溶胶而不产生大量臭氧。研究了一种刷式电离器来替代现有的静电除尘器。该研究在实验室规模下进行，确定了不同电离器材料（碳、铜和不锈钢）和电压（-1、-2和-3 kV）产生的离子量，并比较了各种条件下的病毒灭活效率。结果，当对所有材料施加-3 kV的电压时，产生了约200万个离子，在碳和铜的情况下，分别确认了99.9±0.2%和98.8±0.6%的病毒灭活效率。此外，对流速影响的评估证实，灭活效率随着流速的增加而降低。然而，0.2和0.4 m/s流速的结果有相似的趋势。因此，该系统可在流速高达0.4 m/s的情况下使用。
