Emission rates of indoor ozone emission devices: A literature review
Published in Building and Environment, 2019
As a strong oxidizing gas, ozone can damage the human respiratory tract and cardiovascular system. Aside from ambient outdoor ozone that enters buildings, indoor ozone emission devices (IOEDs) such as disinfectors, air purifiers, and printing devices are the primary source of indoor ozone. This review briefly presents the types and ozone emission mechanisms of IOEDs, the setups and procedures for measuring the ozone emission rate (OER) of IOEDs, and various equations for analyzing test results. This review also summarizes and compares the OERs of different IOEDs and analyzes the factors affecting the OER. The average OERs of in-duct air cleaners, ozone generators, room air purifiers, photocopiers, laser printers, and other small household devices are 62.8, 76.3, 4.6, 3.3, 0.8, and 0.4 mg/h, respectively. The OERs of in-duct air cleaners and ozone generators are generally larger than those of printing devices. The highest and lowest OERs of room air purifiers in the surveyed literature are 30.5 mg/h and 56 μg/h, respectively, with a difference of approximately 550 times. The ozone emission per unit paper for printing devices and per kilowatt hour for other IOEDs are also calculated and compared. In addition, the effects of the design and working mechanism of IOEDs on the OER are also discussed in detail. Users’ operation and daily maintenance of an IOED and the OER test conditions can also affect the OER. Finally, analytical equations are used to compare the influence of the test result processing method on the OER for the same IOED.
Recommended citation: Guo, C., Gao, Z., Shen, J., 2019. Emission rates of indoor ozone emission devices: A literature review. Building and Environment 158, 302-318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.05.024