Performance evaluation of two types of car cabin particle filters in Chinese and Swedish urban environment

摘要

In recent years with increasing awareness of negative health effects of high levels of air pollution in China, the need and demand for more effective cabin air filters became more apparent. In this work, two types of combi-filters mounted in Volvo XC90's HVAC system have been subjected to high and varying levels of particulate pollution in severe Shanghai traffic environment and to less polluted Gothenburg environment. Particle removal efficiency for PM parameters, number of different particle sizes (25 channels, from 10 to 2530nm) and mass distribution profiles have been studied. The filters show 69-78% particle removal efficiency in Shanghai and 73-88% in Gothenburg for PMx. Filtration of nanoparticles up to 500nm diameter is more effective in Gothenburg than in Shanghai. The ground for this study was to understand differences between nominal filter performance and filter efficiency in actual environments with changing weather conditions and different loads of particulate pollution.