Experimental Study on the Effect of Foliage Plants on Removing Indoor Air Contaminants

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate an ability of foliage plants quantitatively toremove chemical contaminants by experiments using a small desiccator for the different kindsof plant under the different luminescence and light sources, fluorescent, incandescent andlight-emitting-diode (LED) lamps. The foliage plants, Benjamin, Spathiphyllum, Areca palmand Concinna, cultivated in hydroponics were used. As a result of the experiments, theeffective performance of contaminant removal was obtained under lighting conditions withthe different intensity distribution by wavelength for the case of pulse injection of toluene intothe chamber without ventilation. The removal efficiency of toluene under an incandescentlight was larger than that under a fluorescent lamp. The different removal efficiency wasobtained according to the kind of LED with different intensity distribution and foliage plants.The blue LED lamp showed the highest removal efficiency among the LED lamps evaluatedin this study.