Ionic Air Cleaners

Ionic air cleaners, or ionizers, take an aggressive approach to air purification: they not only attract positively charged, dirty air molecules (ions) to an electrostatic collector plate, they also apply a negative charge to the exiting molecules. As these negatively charged particles are propelled into the immediate atmosphere by the ionically generated air currents, they have a life span of less than 30 seconds. During this brief period of time, there is a high probability at least some of them will collide and combine with the positively charged, “nasty” molecules. Upon collision, these ions fuse together and their combined weight causes them to fall harmlessly to the ground, just waiting for your friendly vacuum cleaner!

The “trick” here is to accelerate the air current as much as possible in order to increase the chances of negative-positive collisions. Several methods can be used to accomplish this task:

• use an electrostatic device to attract, collect, and neutralize incoming positive ions, thereby creating an air current flow as the positively charged air enters and the negatively charged ionic air exits the machine (referred to as collector plate devices)
• increase the number of ionizing pins within the machine – the more pins, the greater the negative ion creation and hence, the greater the chance negative ions will be attracted to the surrounding positive ions outside of the machine
• accelerate the air flow with an internal fan
• various combinations of the above

The Sharper Image Quadra appears to use a negative collector plate to attract infested positive ions in the immediate air surrounding the machine. The currents created by the air movement are used to send clean ions outward.

The XJ-2000 ionic air cleaner uses both a collector plate and a negative ion generator to aggressively attack contaminated air molecules (positively charged ions). The XJ-2100 goes one step further by adding a fan to accelerate the air movement even further, and the XJ-3000 series adds an activated carbon filter, a HEPA filter, and an ultraviolet light to make it possibly the most powerful room air purifier on the market!

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