THIN AIR

摘要

A new technology has made giant air cleaners in Swedish factories smaller and more energy-efficient, and now it's doing the same for filters in your home. The innovation: paper.rnMany purifiers, both industrial and residential, clean the air by giving pollutants an electric charge and trapping the staticky gunk with oppositely charged metal plates. Humanscale's tabletoprnHumanair replaces metal with strips of paper coiled into a foot-wide spiral. The paper attracts dirt like metal plates do, because charged lines of metallic paint run along one side of the strips. But the nonconductive layers of paper can be packed just 0.06 inch apart without creating sparks, so the paper traps more grit. It squeezes 14 square feet ofrnfilth-catching surface-at least twice as much as other electronic home purifiers-inside a 15-by-13-by-4-inch case.