Last night I met a chemical engineer who is teaching at NJIT
(New Jersey Institute of Technology). He is also the president
of a local company (SRE) which manufactures air cleaning
equipment. He said that a unit costing $ 2800 will keep the
entire home air clean at the maintenance cost of no more than
$30 per year (electric energy and replaceable parts).
The CAP unit is supposed to be very quite (only 20W of
electric power) and is based on biological processing, rather
than on filtering or on thermal and catalytic convertors. The
biotechnology process in use is briefly described on the
company website at:
Comments would be appreciated, especially from those who
have such units. The cost is not negligible but my wife is
very allergic to something and we are debating the idea of
buying the unit. The director said the home unit (#75)
weight is below 30 lb and that it can be returned within the
first 30 days with the penalty of $150 (processing charges).
What follows was extracted from their website. No, I was
not hired to advertise the product.
Ludwik Kowalski
CAP (Clean Air Plant) is the first compact, advanced air
treatment system for commercial and industrial applications.
Used either as a stand-alone system or built into Soil Vapor
Extraction (SVE) and manufacturing processes, the CAP
employs proprietary biofiltration technology that has in
essence miniaturized the process of biological oxidation.
Using natural biological enzymes, the CAP destroys VOCs,
eliminates odors and removes particulates.
This state-of-the-art system enables SRE to expand the
application of a technology that has been used throughout
the 20th century by wastewater treatment facilities and industrial
manufacturers. Unlike conventional systems which merely trap
contaminants for later disposal, the CAP works naturally to
remove heavy metals and particulates from the air and destroy
odors, gases and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by
employing naturally occurring microbes and their enzymes to
break down contaminants to non-harmful compounds.
In simpler terms, this means that they are removed from the air,
collected, and then either recovered for future use or disposed
of appropriately.
The CAP has no filters to change and is easy to maintain. CAPs
can be joined in a series to increase destruction efficiencies.