Research Overview

Increasing air pollution, urbanization, and industrialization severely degrade air quality, which worsens when natural calamities such as wildfires occur. The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19 pandemic) and rising public awareness of the dangers of air pollution significantly accelerated the demand for air purification units in residential and commercial sectors.

Fabric-based filters, ultraviolet (UV) light, and ionized air are widely used filtration technologies for indoor air purification. Traditional air filtration units primarily rely on high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. In the coming years, newer technologies such as UV-based disinfection and bipolar ionization that can neutralize all indoor air pollutants are expected to become more prominent in the indoor air purification industry. The industry’s need of the hour is the development of cost-effective and efficient air purification systems capable of eliminating all types of indoor air pollutants.

The industry constantly researches ways to improve air purifiers’ cost-effectiveness, maintenance requirements, and neutralization capability. Prominent research trends include identifying new catalysts for cost-effective fabrication and energy-efficient operations, bio-based air purification designs to treat a wide range of pollutants, and nanostructured catalysts for higher air purification efficiency.