Air by CCSquared Inc strives to help customers to find problems with air qualify that they can solve, such as vinyl chloride in indoors air or isoflurane in a workers breathing zone. The most common remediation step for indoor air is quite obvious - open the window. The minus to this traditional solution is a huge increase in cost of climate control and carbon footprint. Carbon footprint can be controlled, preferably using a modern ERV (energy recovery ventilation) system but the upfront costs are significant.
Air by CCSquared is developing a new class of air purifier that provides relief from specific indoor air pollutants at a fraction of the cost of solutions available today.
Small molecules such as formaldehyde or vinyl chloride diffuse through the air rather quickly. These substances don't ordinarily form clouds like water vapor in the sky. For this one simple reason, we don't need to mechanically transport air to a filter system to remove the chemicals - we can let the chemicals come to the device. This simple idea allows us to build a very inexpensive air purifier device that doesn't need moving parts - like a roach trap for toxic vapors (patent-pending, US 2023/0018113). The device requires an adsorbent for the chemical in question and a container for this material, like a mesh bag, contained in a box with holes allowing the free flow of air through the adsorbent.
We've build functional prototypes that remove formaldehyde and related aldehydes and tested these in chambers with very bad air quality, the pollutants coming from commercially available piece of particle board. The chamber tests show that the purifiers are very effective in removing formaldehyde vapor. We're currently working to measure the lifetime of the purifier made with materials that are highly affordable. We are also hunting for funding for this project so that we can take it from a simple prototype to a functional product with well-defined and controlled performance specifications.