Experimental Investigation of a Side-Emitting Optical Fibre Mop Fan for Air Cleaning

The photocatalyst mop fan system comprises a flexible fiber mop, which is mounted on a shaft within a centrifugal fan casing, and is rotated by a direct drive, high efficiency motor. The system performs self-cleaning when circulating indoor air throughout the building space, thus reducing need of outdoor fresh air and energy for heating/cooling the air. The fibre mop fan is constructed of many flexible fibres, each coated with the photocatalyst, titanium dioxide (TiO2). In operation, the air being moved by the mop fan will pass over the large surface area of the flexible fibres. The UV lamps are used to facilitate photocatalytic oxidation. The internal surface of the fan casing is coated with a highly reflective material, to spread the light evenly over the mop, and finished with a layer of TiO2 to achieve self cleaning. Following the design, construction and testing of a photocatalytic polymer mop fan prototype, a photocatalytic side-emitting optical fiber mop fan prototype was designed, constructed and tested. The performance was compared with the polymer fiber mop fan. It was found the system has better efficiency than the polymer fiber mop fan due to more reasonable UV lamp arrangement and evenly UV-light transmittance. It was also found the final room pollutant concentration depends on the pollutant generating rate by using the photocatalyst mop fan air cleaning system. The system is more compact than the polymer fiber mop fan.