Well, the difference between an ionic air purifier vs HEPA purifier is quite simple: both of them clean the air in your room but filters of these cleaners work differently. An Ionizer purifies the air by electrically charging air molecules. As a result, it can remove tiny particles of dust and dangerous airborne infections.
It would be a very good idea to use this type of air purifier in the gym, for example. A HEPA air purifier uses an in-built fan to suck air inside and runs it through the dense filter to trap small parts of dust contaminants. Its traditional physical filter is simple to understand, and usually considered to be extremely efficient, so people prefer to buy it.
These are the particles that float in the air for hours or days and can be breathed deep into your lungs. An electrostatic precipitators' performance is best when the plates are clean. Yet, even at that point, it performs much worse when compared to a HEPA filter.
To make matters worse, when the plates become dirty, the performance degrades further. It is common for ozone to be produced as a by-product of the charged plates. Ozone is considered indoor air pollution. We see this often with car air purifiers and it's not what you would expect from an air purification system. For someone with a sensitive system such as COPD, emphysema or asthma , ozone can be a huge problem. Room air purifiers are now tested to meet ozone requirements.
As a result there has been a large shift away from ionic air purifiers to HEPA filter air purifiers. It's somewhat difficult to even find an ozone generating purifier now and with good reason.
In our opinion, the last thing you want an air purifier to do is introduce a pollutant into your home. Your expectation is your home will have clean air rather than ending up with high levels of ozone. While we are harsh on ozone generators there is one area where they work well. This is in cigarette smoke removal from a room. Commercial ozone generators like this are used in hotel rooms to remove difficult tobacco smoke smells.
Ozone air purification is sold only as a commercial air purifier since the State of California does not allow them to be sold to consumers. Since California is such a powerful state, it's had the effect of limiting the sales nationwide. Source: Wikipedia. The other type of ionic air cleaner is an air ionizer. In some cases not even a motor. This is referred to as a negative ion generator. Because they emit a negative ion charge that is meant to attach to the airborne particulates.
The idea is that once the airborne particles like dust , pollen, or a mold spore take on the electrical charge they will be more likely to stick to surfaces. A problem with this approach is it the particles don't discriminate in what they attach to.
It could be the carpeting, walls, your clothes and worst case - your lungs. For mold spores , you really don't want them floating and then sticking to the walls.
You want to catch them in the room air purifier. The technology has not changed much since then. For air cleaning performance, HEPA air filters are the best technology. They remove the most airborne contaminants as well as the most dangerous particulates. Besides, HEPA filters become more efficient over time. In contrast, air ionizers exploit the chemical properties of ions to remove particles and microbes from the air. Ionizers create negative ions using electricity and discharge them into the air.
The negative ions attach to positively charged particles in the room to create a dense particle that is heavy enough to fall to the floor.
The negative ions used by ionizers can stop the growth of viruses , while the ozone produced by the interaction of negative ions and other particles can kill bacteria, fungi, and mold. However, the EPA says air ionizers are relatively ineffective at removing larger particles like dust and pollen, and they are more suited to removing smaller particles such as tobacco smoke and smog, which measure between 0.
Air purifiers and ionizers use different technology to cleanse the air. While air purifiers remove particles from circulation by trapping them, ionizers simply make them heavy enough to fall to the ground meaning they still need to be cleaned up, and they can easily be disturbed and reintroduced into the air.
Air purifiers also work on a wider range of particles such as large allergens like dust and pollen as well as smaller ones such as pet dander, bacteria, and viruses. This means they are helpful for those suffering from pet allergies, hay fever, and asthma. If you need more, we have a full feature on air purifiers and allergies. As they remove a much narrower range of particles, air ionizers may not be as good at eliminating the triggers of allergies and asthma.
While both products clean the air from impurities, they operate in two completely different ways. Depending on why you want to get a home air cleaner in the first place, will determine if you should get a HEPA air purifying device or ionizer.
A HEPA air purifier operates by sucking air into the device through a dense, physical filter that traps airborne contaminants like dust, allergens, mold spores, bacteria, and smoke. An ionizer operates by sending out electrically charged ions into the air that bond with harmful impurities. A HEPA air purifier uses a fan to draw air into the unit. It traps particles inside a dense filter and then pushes out clean, fresh air into the room. This process continually repeats while the product is turned on and keeps the room free from contaminants.
If new impurities enter the room, like smoke or dust, the device will eventually pull these particles into the filter and prevent them from returning to the air. In fact, the highest-grade HEPA filter can trap The process behind how an ionizer works is that it sends out electrically charged ions into the air that bond with harmful impurities.
And once a bond is made, these particles become too heavy to stay in the air. Ionizers can attack finer particles than HEPA filters; down to 0. This can result in a constant cycle of impurities being removed from the air and then returning back to it because the particles are not technically removed from the room.
You can learn more about this topic on our ionizers and asthma page. As you can see, the major advantage that a HEPA air purifier vs Ionizer has is that the HEPA unit actually traps the airborne contaminants and stops them from reentering the air you breathe.
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