Ozone emission rate testing and ranking method using environmental chamber

Ionization-based air cleaners can emit high concentrations of ozone. With the aim to limit the ozone concentration below the standard value in actual use conditions, we propose a standard procedure for testing and ranking the ozone emission of air cleaners. It is demonstrated by testing 27 samples of air cleaners that ozone emission rate can be measured in an airtight environmental chamber, by applying a generation-decay model to the concentration increase curve. The results indicate that deposition velocities vd on chamber wall surfaces need to be better characterized so that the ozone emission of a tested product could be characterized by a three-parameter model. The model takes into account actual room sizes and surface material deposition effects to predict ozone concentrations in indoor applications. This procedure accounts for ozone decay effect in an explicit manner and allows using alternative testing chamber sizes other than as specified in the current Underwriters Laboratory standard.