A review of portable air cleaner devices: purification processes, performance standards, effectiveness in controlling indoor air pollutants

Indoor air pollutants are among the five most important environmental health risks. In recent years, concerns regarding indoor air in buildings have increased. In this review, studies conducted on portable air cleaners have been investigated.

After determining the keywords and conducting comprehensive searches in the internet databases, taking into account the entry and exit criteria, a complete review was carried out in order to obtain the latest findings and the general trend of the studies.

Portable air cleaner devices are very diverse and are divided based on the type of technology used. Many standards have been developed to evaluate the performance of these devices in different countries, but none of them cover all aspects of performance. The effectiveness of these devices on removing VOCs is between 20 and 80% depending on the type of technology and other influencing factors, and their effectiveness of removing suspended particles is between 70 and 95% on average. Furthermore, their efficiency in controlling Covid-19 is reported to be above 80% in cases where HEPA filters with grade 13 and above are used.

Devices equipped with the HEPA filtration process have been found to be very effective in controlling indoor suspended particles. The use of devices equipped with UVGI, plasma and ozone technologies should be accompanied by caution due to the production of dangerous by-products.