Commercial vs personal air purifiers

What are commercial
air purifiers?

What are personal
air purifiers?

Why we need the right
air purification

Building a commercial air
quality management plan

If you’re looking to improve indoor air quality, at work or home, you need the right type of air purifier.

The best air purification system for any indoor space depends on several factors, including where you’ll be using the air purifiers, the size of these areas and what activities take place in each space.

If you’re wondering whether you need commercial or personal air purifiers, it’s important to consider the above questions so that you can find a level of air purification that’s right for your environment and the best investment in terms of both health and wellbeing and energy efficiency.

What are commercial air purifiers?

Commercial air purifiers are designed for large indoor environments such as offices, gyms, hotels, hospitals, restaurants and schools, where high numbers of people are likely to be present.

Built to cope with the air purification demands of busy environments, commercial air purifiers remove almost 100% of known pollutants using a mix of filtration and purification technologies, making workplace indoor air safer to breathe for employees, customers and visitors.

Installing commercial air purifiers

Commercial air purifiers are also usually wall or ceiling mounted by professionals, out of the way of people and equipment, and fitted with High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters which can capture particles as small as 0.1 microns in size, including dust, pollen, bacteria, viruses and VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

Networked Indoor Air Quality Management

Perhaps most significantly, commercial air purifiers can form part of a system of air purifiers, sensors and monitoring software that can be connected to form a complete network for healthy air in any room, floor or space.

By working in harmony with industrial HVAC systems, commercial systems can be seamlessly integrated into existing buildings or designed as part of a new build, scaling with businesses as they grow.

This integrated approach to commercial air purification also provides users with real time monitoring and information on indoor air quality. It’s our belief that indoor air quality monitoring should be a fundamental element of any organisation’s clean air strategy.

Not only does it give you clarity of the air quality in your environment with actionable data, but it can also help organisations to earn points towards internationally recognised building certifications.

Discover Fellowes Array: The Most Advanced Networked Air Quality System

Monitoring your indoor air quality is vital to achieving and maintaining a healthy workplace environment

What are personal air purifiers?

Personal air purifiers are designed for small offices or individual living spaces in a home, where they are ideal for cleaning the air in areas as small as 5m² and up to 130m².

Usually a free or floor-standing unit, these portable units can be set up by the user by moving to the required location and simply plugging them in, making them a very convenient solution for certain needs.

Additionally, a personal air purifier will often have a HEPA filter and carbon filter, but will not typically offer the reporting and monitoring of a commercial air purifier.

Many personal air purifiers have a CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) rating, a performance metric that tells you the volume of air that the model of air purifier can handle. This can help you identify the right size and spec of air purifier for cleaning the air in any given space.

Used in the spaces they are designed for, with the filters changed as needed, personal air purifiers do exactly what’s required of them by cleaning the air in the room they’re in.

Personal air purifiers are usually unsuitable for commercial environments, however, because they are not designed to clean the larger volumes of air in open plan offices and similar size spaces.

Operating as stand-alone units, personal air purifiers cannot be networked, and cannot provide the level of air quality reporting that is invaluable in a corporate or public work environment.

Personal or small office air purifiers are effective at cleaning the air in small spaces but shouldn’t be used in commercial settings

Why we need the right air purification

Your business will benefit by tackling indoor air pollution.

By creating a healthier workspace, and an environment that supports physical and mental wellbeing, you and everyone around you will benefit from better health and the spread of fewer viral illnesses, and from productive working days and a more enjoyable working environment.

Good air quality is also critical to the quality and length of our lives. CBI Economics analysis has found that almost 17,000 premature deaths could be prevented in the UK alone each year through better quality air.

The CBI also calculates that the UK could gain almost 40,000 productive years, and an estimated £1 billion economic gain in the first year of improved air quality.

The UK could benefit from an estimated £1bn economic gain after one year of improved air quality.

Healthy Air for Healthy Spaces: learn more about why clean air is critical to creating healthy indoor environment.

Building a commercial air quality management plan

Because commercial and public buildings usually include a combination of environments, from kitchens and washrooms to waiting rooms and open plan offices, a good commercial air purification system will be planned and installed to provide the right type and quantity of air cleaning in each space.

Each air purifier needs to be the appropriate size and capacity for the room it is in, and able to deliver the recommended number of air changes per hour (ACH) (Link) for the space. For example, in a commercial kitchen setting this could be up to 18 air changes per hour, and in an open plan office at least four air changes per hour. This bespoke approach can also help minimise energy costs by ensuring that air purifiers are only operating as often as needed for recommended air quality in each space.

If you look after a large working environment, you can create an intelligent, scalable network of air purification units around the building that can work alongside your HVAC system. This makes commercial air purification a practical, cost-effective way to refresh your indoor air, meet health and safety regulations, while maximising wellbeing and productivity in your workplace.

Get in touch with us below to build the indoor air quality management plan for your organisation’s needs.

BUILD A BESPOKE INDOOR AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT PLAN