Can air purifiers remove formaldehyde?

Formaldehyde is a gas that is harmful to the human body and cannot be seen by the naked eye. It is often hidden in decoration materials. Therefore, when buying a house and decorating it now, you must use materials that do not emit formaldehyde, but no matter what, formaldehyde will still exist. Now with the advancement of technology, there are also some air purifiers specifically for formaldehyde. So, can air purifiers remove formaldehyde?

Air purifiers have air particle removal technologies, mainly mechanical filtration, adsorption, electrostatic electret filtration, high-voltage electrostatic dust collection, negative ion and plasma methods.

Mechanical filtration

Generally, particles are captured through the following four methods: direct interception, inertial collision, Brownian diffusion mechanism, and screening effect. It has a good collection effect on fine particles but has large wind resistance. In order to obtain high purification efficiency, the filter needs to be dense, which leads to a reduced lifespan, so the filter needs to be replaced regularly.

Adsorption

The large surface area and porous structure of the material are used to capture gaseous pollutants, which has a more significant removal effect; particulate pollutants are large in size and easily clogged.

Electrostatic electret filtration

Compared with mechanical filtration, electrostatic filtration can effectively block particulate pollutants larger than 0.1 microns in the air, such as dust, hair, pollen, bacteria, etc.

High voltage electrostatic dust collector

The dust collection method uses a high-voltage electrostatic field to ionize the gas so that the dust particles are charged and adsorbed onto the electrode. Although its wind resistance is small, it has a poor effect on capturing larger particles and fibers, can cause discharge, and is troublesome and time-consuming to clean. It is easy to produce ozone and cause secondary pollution.

Negative ion and plasma methods

By charging the particles in the air, they aggregate into larger particles and settle. However, the particles are not actually removed but simply adhere to nearby surfaces, where they can easily lead to re-entrainment of dust.