Activated Carbon filters used in residential and office buildings applicatons

During the past half century, filtration techniques based on the use of activated carbons have been widely used in industrial applications, and considerable knowledge about the mass transfer processes involved has been developed. Surprisingly, the use of activated carbon filters in building applications has remained marginal, and one reason is probably the lack of information on the actual efficiency of such systems in realistic configurations of building operation. In the present paper, models combining advection, sorption and diffusion in a porous medium were implemented in the MatlabISimulink environment to simulate the dynamic behavior of an integrated building1HVAC with activated-carbon filter system. Another application concerns in the implementation of the activated carbon in a portable air cleaning device. The aim of the simulations was to study the ability of the filter to improve the indoor air quality of the residential and office-like buildings located in urban areas. Several configurations were tested with real weather data taking into account the effect of humidity on the adsorption process and also the variation of exterior temperature. The simulations show good results only when the filter is purged during the night, when it is introduced in a HVAC system. The other configurations show little interest compared to the case when there's no activated carbon filter in use.