Page 22 - Climate Control News May 2022

Indoor Air Quality
Research confirms power of potted plants
ORDINARY POTTED HOUSE plants can po- tentially make a significant contribution to re- ducing air pollution in homes and offices, ac- cording to new research led by the University of Birmingham and in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).
During a series of experiments monitoring common houseplants exposed to nitrogen di- oxide (NO2) – a common pollutant – research- ers calculated that in some conditions, the plants could be able to reduce NO2 by as much as 20 per cent.
Researchers tested three houseplants common- ly found in UK homes, easy to maintain and not overly expensive to buy. They included Peace lily (Spathiphyllum wallisii), Corn plant (Dracaena fragrans) and fern arum (Zamioculcas zamiifolia).
“IT IS LIKELY A BIOLOGICAL PROCESS IS TAKING PLACE INVOLVING THE SOIL.”
Each plant was put, by itself, into a test cham- ber containing levels of NO2 comparable to an office situated next to a busy road.
Over a period of one hour, the team calculated that all the plants, regardless of species, were able to remove around half the NO2 in the cham- ber. The performance of the plants was not de- pendent on the plants' environment, for example whether it was in light or dark conditions, and whether the soil was wet or dry.
Lead researcher Dr Christian Pfrang said the plants used were all very different from each oth-
Plants can reduce NO2 by as much as 20 per cent.
er, yet they all showed strikingly similar abilities to remove NO2 from the atmosphere.
“This is very different from the way indoor plants take up CO2 in our earlier work, which is strongly dependent on environmental factors such as night time or daytime, or soil water con- tent,” Pfang said.
The team also calculated what these results might mean for a small office (15 m3) and a me- dium-sized office (100 m3) with different levels of ventilation.
In a poorly ventilated small office with high levels of air pollution, they calculated that five houseplants would reduce NO2 levels by around 20 per cent. In the larger space, the effect would be smaller -- 3.5 per cent, though this effect would be increased by adding more plants.
While the effects of the plants in reducing NO2 are clear, the precise mechanism by which they do this remains a mystery.
"We don't think the plants are using the same process as they do for CO2 uptake, in which the gas is absorbed through stomata — tiny holes — in the leaves,” Pfang said.
“There was no indication, even during longer experiments, that our plants released the NO2 back into the atmosphere, so there is likely a bio- logical process taking place also involving the soil the plant grows in, but we don't yet know what that is."
In the next phase of the research, the team will be designing sophisticated tools for modelling air quality indoors encompassing a much wider range of variables.
Data demands of new normal
WITH THE HEALTH and safety of indoor spaces now a major concern of the pandemic-era global workforce, Microshare has released EverSmart Air, to address the demands of the “new normal.”
Microshare, a leading provider of smart build- ing data to multinationals, governments, and other institutions around the world, has repeat- edly innovated during the pandemic and was the first to market with a wearable contact tracing solution and a data-driven cleaning product, EverSmart Clean.
The global COVID-19 pandemic shined a new light on the need for empirical data on indoor spaces. spaces and Microshare’s EverSmart suite of
products is designed to meet these challenges. EverSmart Air monitors and warns against poor air quality issues which can accelerate the
spread of viral illness.
By harnessing and correlating data from the
Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, EverSmart Air alerts building managers on issues related to temperature, humidity, and CO2; all factors vital to optimising indoor spaces to provide a safe and productive indoor environment.
The EverSmart suite of products monitors space occupancy and usage, air quality, energy consumption, customer satisfaction, environ- mental performance and more.
Microshare provides empirical data on indoor
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