Air high quality will be impacted by smoke from wildfires. Our reporter got down to construct an air filter — in a mode the EPA praised, utilizing solely issues she already had at dwelling.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It is nearly summer time, and if current years are a tenet, meaning heightened threats of wildfires. Billowing smoke from wildfires may cause harmful air high quality ranges. Air filters in properties may also help handle smoke, however what if you do not have one? NPR’s Alejandra Borunda got down to see whether it is doable to make your individual air filters.
ALEJANDRA BORUNDA, BYLINE: The quick reply is sure. You may construct a DIY air filter in lower than half-hour with stuff that you simply most likely have already got in your own home.
ELLIOTT GALL: My identify is Elliott Gall, and I’m an affiliate professor within the division of mechanical and supplies engineering at Portland State College.
BORUNDA: He is the designer of this air filter known as The Cocoon. Graduate scholar Brett Stinson explains.
BRETT STINSON: It is fairly easy. It is only a cloth filter. That is cotton batting and a field fan.
BORUNDA: Principally, only a tube of cloth connected to a field fan. Gall says it is an previous know-how known as a baghouse filter.
GALL: And it basically is a chunk of cloth that you simply power air by means of that filters out particulate matter.
BORUNDA: To me, it appears like a blobby, puffy, 8-foot-long sausage. But it surely works nearly in addition to air filters you should purchase. Right here within the lab up in Portland, we load up a sealed bedroom-sized space with smoke and begin The Cocoon operating. Inside about 10 or quarter-hour, the air is just about clear. And my associate and I got down to construct a Cocoon for ourselves.
That is Ali (ph) and Alex’s (ph) try to make a field fan filter.
Gall despatched me a PDF with directions. First, we monitor down a regular field fan, like those they promote in nearly each ironmongery shop. Then you definitely want an enormous piece of cloth that is 72″ vast.
Here is the measuring tape.
That is vital as a result of that measurement will match neatly on the fan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEASURING TAPE PULLING AND RETRACTING)
BORUNDA: Gall used cotton batting just like the stuff inside quilts.
However we do not have that, clearly. I am not a quilter. What we do have – they usually say is OK – is sheets. Cotton or linen work greatest, they are saying.
We discovered an previous, full-sized flat sheet behind a cupboard. That was good. Larger ones might work, too, however you’d have to chop them down. So then we took the sheet, and we folded it in half lengthwise, like an enormous sizzling canine bun. After which I connected the 2 lengthy sides collectively very fastidiously with duct tape.
(SOUNDBITE OF DUCT TAPE PULLING)
BORUNDA: You find yourself with this huge, lengthy tube. And you then take some rubber bands or hair ties or no matter and twist them round one finish of the tube – such as you’re placing it in just a little ponytail.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUBBER BAND SNAPPING)
ALEX: That works.
BORUNDA: And now we’re on to the final step. We slip the open finish of the material tube across the fringe of the field fan and duct tape it in place.
(SOUNDBITE OF DUCT TAPE PULLING)
BORUNDA: However be sure to do not make this error.
I lined up the controls. In order that’s just a little bit foolish. That was my mistake. Do not do this.
Then we flip it on.
(SOUNDBITE OF FAN WHIRRING)
BORUNDA: Ooh. And now we have inflated an enormous blue tube.
It poofs up and appears precisely like a kind of slinky tubes little children crawl by means of. Gall says it really works greatest when you can run it in rooms that are not too huge, like in a single day in a bed room, for instance. For NPR Information, I am Alejandra Borunda.
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