Hi I thought I'd do a very timely video on air filters here. this one in that I've had in my lab for many years and it's pretty much the Ducks guts in terms of room air filters or HEPA filters as they're called now. This was prompted by a video friend Blanche just start released today and where she shows like a really crappy brand air filter. So I'll link in that video at the end and down below.

Check it out! So I thought I'd Contrast that by just talking about air filters in general, what to look out for when you're buying one and things like that and show you one of these are top of the range ones. Now we're go into the details of what makes a good HEPA air filter in a minute and we'll take a look at my are Blue Air. This is an A Blue Air 650 a model I Believe it's a discontinued, it's been improved since then, but this is pretty much one of the Rolls-royce air filters you can get on the market and we'll go into and explain why. So yes, this is very pertinent with the virus going around at the moment and you might want to filter out airborne bacteria and viruses and just generally I keep a like a healthy especially if you work indoors like I do in a lab here especially with solder in of course so you have to have your own local our filters when you sold a bit.

We use all sorts of chemicals and other sorts of stuff in like a lab environment so it's pretty important to take care of your health and have a really good air purifier and high volume one like we've got here now I Mentioned these are known as HEPA air filters. Hep is actually one of the standards It stands for high efficiency particulate air and there's various levels. This is actually what's called a H14 HEPA filter and that means it will filled our filter out 99.97% roughly of particulate matter above three microns, but this one's actually this blue air model. It can actually do down 2.1 micron which is actually important for viruses and in particular the coronavirus.

Now we're talking about recently because that's about the size of those particular viruses around about the point one micron mark. So yes, I feel like this will actually filter out viruses and other bacteria in the air. That's one of their jobs, but there are various standards there are. once higher they go into the use standards that are higher than this.

But basically this is the high H14. If you want a really good Hepa air purifiers should be looking for a H14 rating or that 99.97% filtration. Now every air purifier will have an inlet port and an outlet port. In this particular one, the inlet ports are down the bottom, here, on the sides, all around and the outlets are here up the top here and also on this side here.

Now there are two different technologies used to actually are purified air or one that complements the other we'll talk about in a minute. but basically every air purifi should contain filters like this. In this particular case, this one's actually got three on either side and we'll go into the types of filter in a minute. But basically it's basically a big fan in there that sucks the air in from the inlet port and then forces it through the filter material and then out into the air.

And the HEPA filter itself is basically the effectiveness of this filter. So you're just forcing air through the particular filter material like this, and that's what captures all the stuff. But there's an additional technology in air filters which this particular how that one has, which we'll take a look at, which is what's known as an electrostatic filter as well. So basically what that does is that it's inside and we'll take a look at it in a sec.

It actually charges up the particulate matter in the air. it's basically just a high voltage probe tips that actually energizes the air and so it's effectively like a negative ion generator basically, and that charges up the particles. Charged particles actually stick to the particular material in here, so it just increases the effectiveness. Rather than just trying to force the particles through, they'll electrostatically couple themselves to the material itself.

So if you combine those two technologies, both the Hepa air filter material and the electrostatic technology, it becomes really effective. So if you're looking to buy a good air filter, it should have both. But there is a trap for young players in the electrostatic part of. these are particular types of air filters in that where these ion generators in that they can actually generate ozone and ozone is actually bad for you.

So who remembers the hole in the Ozone Layer crisis? Geez, when was that back in the 80s or something like that? Anyway, that was a big deal, but they're nothing like what we've gone through at the moment. It's just nuts. Anyway, Ozone. Well, we need ozone up there in the upper atmosphere.

It's bad down here if you breathe it in and these are iron, generators can actually produce ozone. It depends on the particular type and it's you know how it does it, how much ozone it actually produces and we'll talk about that in particular, this model in a minute. But yeah, it's bad for you. And there are health standards for a maximum amounts of ozone in the air.

so if you've got a poorly designed air filter that they just don't care about how much ozone it produces, that can actually damage your health. So not good and free. And in her video, she didn't want the ozone generator. so she just went in there and disconnected the ion high-voltage char plug from inside so that it wouldn't generate any.

So yeah, I don't blame her at all. So I'll show you what you should be looking for in a good air filter. and I highly recommend these blue air ones. They're pretty much the Rolls-royce if she can afford it.

They are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination like you can get like a real el cheapo for one for like one-fifth the price or something like that. But if you really take your air purification seriously then you should be getting a top-quality name. brand new Air 650 a I think the 680 IR something there now got whiz-bang ones with all into web-enabled and all that sort of rubbish. But anyway now I've got the old-school one designed and engineered in sweet and I know my Swedish viewers that unfortunately like yet made in China as everything is these days so it's an all middle case.

this is one of the things you should be looking for because especially if it's got the ion generator inside. you want to have an all-metal case, but the air filters are play a part in that as well. But anyway, aren't you see all-metal are shezzy like this, none of that plastic rubbish and all the outer case door metal. Another thing, your quality ones will have our built in particulate sensors like this.

They've got two sensors I believe one is for particulate matter so it'll be like a P 2.5 or something like that sensor so it actually senses all the crap in the air and it will actually have an automatic mode which will then ramp up the fan and actually produce more like a greater volume of air to try and clean it out quicker. and also I think there's like some sort of odor our sensor as well because it's got a smell thing like this low, it tries to work out how much I smell and dust is in the air. We'll go into these because removing dust and removing smells are two different things based on the filter and a nice little attention to detail in that product design. They put a magnet inside this so the remote control just like sticks on the side of the case anywhere you want it and I found that the automatic mode on this particular blue air one does work really well because if I like start you know producing like spraying around some chemicals, solder in smoke and things like that it will actually detect that and start to actually ramp up so you can see that it's actually dropped down because I've just uh, switch the thing on so it's just getting up to speed there.

I'm here all week and the other thing of course which is important for someone like me who shoots videos is that I don't want to have to turn off my air filter when I'm shooting videos like I have to do for my aircon I've usually got to turn the air con off. otherwise the noise from the aircon bleeds through onto the audio has it's actually on the lowest speed. at the moment, you can barely hear it I Think it's rated for like 36 DB but there's a giant fan the 300 millimeter diameter fan down in there and that means it can move large volumes of air like fairly silently. Just think about the amount of noise these things going to produce because the thing with air purifiers is that it's all about the volume of air like per minute or per hour that you can typically exchange.

But this one's like nominally rated for like a 65 square meter room. So that means it's going to room completely replace the air in in that particular room in a certain amount of time. But there's no real standard for this, but it's just like comparing different models in the same range in the same manufacturer so it's able to replace. You know, a large volume of air on the lowest settings so the noise doesn't really upset you.

So I can actually change the speed of this? You can probably hear that it's really start and everything's starting to vibrate well as massive volume of air coming out of that thing. now. okay when you first come into the office or something, you turned on Auto and it might go it like it might pump it out on food for like five minutes or something like that. Then Ila gradually realize that the air is pretty good.

It doesn't need to do that and it'll settle down in auto mode. So that's something you should be looking for. Now when it comes down to a thing that makes a filter, a good filter is the actual filter itself will look like dirt. Now this is actually the smoke stop model.

You know they're all pretty much going to be similar. So this fibrous material here is what does the filtering. They fold them like this into deep slots. just like you know, heatsink fins or something like that.

It just means that the surface area down in there is much larger. They're just larger pockets like that. Ultimately, you're going to get longer life the deeper these slots are and the more surface area you get into these things. Now this one get in a little bit worn down.

You might have seen the replacement light replace the filter blue I Recommend every six months, but you know I've used him for a couple of years and I replaced it I show your photo here of both my old previous one before I replace that like it was pretty horrific. but yeah, how often you're a place these is up to the use and the stuff it's filtering out and things like that. I should have written on here, but I've got the tweet at the time when I changed this so I can date that Anyway, this material is very important. Don't buy one with like paper filters because paper filters.

they can build up like bacteria and moisture on them and they're not in any bacterial material. so you can actually get mold and you know other crap growing on there and you don't want your air filter to then be like blowing out mold spores everywhere. So this particular one because these are very expensive. So this one actually uses a polypropylene material in combination with polyethylene as well.

and it doesn't use any other glues or anything like that to hold it together. so that's what you're paying for. You're paying for a top quality like a Polly put the Kettle on antibacterial material. so it means that it's not going to retain moisture and you're not going to get crap growing on this.

and of course this is actually a like a paper cardboard us around. but that's not the part that's doing the filtering or the all the important stuff is the material in here. So you definitely want any bacterial Polly put the Kettle On material. And of course you want a material that can actually electrostatically attract.

all of those particles that you've electrostatically are charged up with your ion generator as well. And a polypropylene / polyester type material does that nicely. Now as I said, this one's called a smoke stop filter and this is at the more expensive one because it's got an extra filter on the top to actually filter out smells and odors and things like that. Because here is the thing with filters.

if just the HEPA that'd probably put the Kettle on. HEPA filter material can only filter out the particulate matter. It can't filter out smells, odors, volatile organic chemicals, and all that sort of stuff to do that. You actually need an activated carbon filter.

and that's what. This has. a layer of activated carbon. and no, it's not this black spongy filter material that you'll typically find on your solder in fume extractors and stuff like that.

That's actually not the thing that's doing the business now. I Won't open this up, but I will show you a photo here at if it's what's behind this and it's actually little cells of activated carbon granules and these will actually absorb. These carbon granules will little hits of these. They will actually absorb all of the odors that volatile organic chemicals, the VOCs in the air and things like that and they will actually suckle those up and they will eventually saturate and wear out.

Hence why. Another reason why you have to replace these filters regularly is that not only does the Polly put the Kettle On filter material actually get clogged up with you know, or dirt and grime, another you know, crap that is taken out of the air, but also those activated carbon granules can actually are swell up and then they become less and less effective until they're practically totally useless. They can't absorb any more of those VOCs and other odors and crap in the air. Now, Blue Air have actually done a proper lab tests measured the ozone produced by this.

They they reckon that the ozone actually produced inside is already at quite miniscule levels below health standard limits. But they actually claim that after the air that comes out of here actually has less ozone, so it actually filters out the ozone from the air that it's actually sucking in. So that's what a quality one like this claims and I'm sure they've got like the data to back that up. This is like one of the best brands on the market, so they're entirely reputable.

But be aware of the cheap is you just don't know. Yeah, you don't want to be producing ozone. and of course you have to install these the right way up. The carbon filter goes on the outside, that's why it says facing out and your actual air HEPA Air material goes on the inside.

This particular one has three separate fielder's They're all identical. So yeah, it's like it really contains. Well, that one's starting to all the side ones. I Think I'd better start buying some tiny, get some new ones.

They are quite expensive. They're like, you know, 150. They're like fifty dollars each or something. Focus: Yep, I Think that's coming into focus.

You can see that those little arms out there sitting in the middle, just flapping around in the breeze. Inside they're mounted the little side arms. they're actually the high voltage probe tips which will ionize the air centered directly over the fan there. Maybe you can see the fan down the bottom perhaps? and hopefully you can see inside.

there one actually has additional points. You can see that there's one there and there's one over there as well. Now I'd love to actually do a full teardown of this thing. unfortunately.

I Am it defeated? Wah Wah Wah Wah! If you do know how to get into one of these babies without breaking it, do let me know. Anyway, like there's not a huge amount in there. There's a giant I like AC fan so it'll be mains AC Fan: This one's I think it draws up to it like I think I've measured about 80 watts on high. It's all about the effectiveness of the filters, the actual resistance of the filter material itself to the air, and then how much volt, what fan pressure you actually need to actually what air pressure you need to push it through the filter and then exchange the volume of air.

It's all about the exchange of volume of air like per minute or per hour. or however, you want to specify that bigger fan you can get, the more volume you're going to be able to push with lower noise and everything else. So yeah, like that's why. I Like a big unit like this on casters I'm always rolling it around the lab and as I said, your good ones are going to have like our particulate sensors in there that actually measure particulates in the air and then can automatically adjust.

But hang on. I Was able to get this front panel off so we can now see these two senses senses. Interestingly, this one here is not actually drawn the air from there, it's actually taking it from the inside here so that's better. It's the actual Inlet air that's actually being sucked in through the side.

but I don't think it's neither here nor there. And I'll put up the data sheet for that sensor and as you can see, it's a gaseous sensors from company haven't heard of before. But yeah, it's specifically designed for this task to detect air quality. Like you know, gas concentrations in various gas and odors and things in the air quality.

So yet that's exactly what you'd expect. I Believe this is a typical Rpm at 2.5 laser particulate sensors. so just our six sensors particulate matter in the air and you can buy these as off-the-shelf modules like Omer and another companies make them. So I'm not sure which one this is got a gas sensor? We've got a particulate sensor and these typically have like a little built-in fan to them, but of course this thing already has a fan so it's using the circulating air inside the unit to actually push air into this thing.

So yeah, that's why you know these things typically take like a minute after you're paramon. That's why you saw the sensors before, like show full-scale when we first turned it on. These things take a while to settle down. Anyway, this gaseous senses rather interesting.

It uses a like a resistive element in it to actually do the detection, but as you can see, they've actually spent quite a bit of money and they've done this properly with both of these detectors. and this is probably something you won't find in any of your art. cheapies, only in your professional ones because these aren't cheap. Oh I was able to take that out.

Looks like it's just an optical one. Doesn't look like a laser one here. You can see how it just goes through. I've got a couple of lenses there and it's just detecting particulate matter inside the chamber there.

But anyway, I hope you enjoyed that video and found it useful. And yeah, it's worth every cent. I Think the cheapies are just. they're almost not worth it.

Like it's worth paying for decent quality. So let us know if you've got other really top quality brands out there. I Think aren't Philips into it and things like that? So you know quality companies like that really know what they're doing. So anyway, if you did find that video useful, please give it a big thumbs up.

And as always you can discuss down below and catch me on my library' channel as well. Catch you next time.