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Fibrous and granular activated carbon mixed media for effective gas removal as a cabin air filter

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Abstract

There is a need for the purification of indoor air owing to a high rate of pollution in today’s world. For this, cabin air filters (CAFs) are widely used, which requires the addition of certain adsorbents to increase the volatile organic compound (VOC) removal efficiency. However, this addition causes high-pressure resistance, which may hamper commercial applications by requiring more energy and negatively affecting fresh air delivery rate. Hence, in this study, a high-performance combined CAF (CCAF) with excellent dust and chemical filtration performance and low differential pressure was prepared using granular activated carbon (GAC)/activated carbon fiber (ACF) mixed medium. The GAC/ACF mixed medium had higher air permeability than the ACF medium of the same weight, and it exhibited similar ultrafine dust filtration performance to the ACF medium without an increase in differential pressure. In addition, the GAC/ACF mixed medium showed excellent gas removal performance without increasing differential pressure by combining the VOC removal characteristics of the GAC and ACF filter media. The improved VOC removal performance of the GAC/ACF mixed medium was due to the hybrid effect of the hierarchical pore structures of the GAC and the nearly uniform pore structures of the ACF, which resulted in a slow and increased gas adsorption by the GAC and rapid gas adsorption of the ACF.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Korea (No. 20010219).

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Author notes

  1. Jae-Hyung Wee and Young Hwan Bae contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

  2. Sang Young Yeo and Euigyung Jeong contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-corresponding authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Textile R&D Department, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, 143 Hanggaulro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 15588, Republic of Korea

    Jae-Hyung Wee, Younghwan Bae, Hyunchul Ahn, Yeong Og Choi & Sang Young Yeo

  2. Department of Textile System Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Buk-Gu, Daegu, 41566, Republic of Korea

    Euigyung Jeong

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  1. Jae-Hyung Wee
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Wee, JH., Bae, Y., Ahn, H. et al. Fibrous and granular activated carbon mixed media for effective gas removal as a cabin air filter. Carbon Lett. 32, 1111–1118 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42823-022-00345-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42823-022-00345-7

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