The Role Adsorption Plays In Indoor Air Quality

Raindrops on your car window. The painted metal mailbox on the corner of your street. The fogged mirror in your bathroom when you get out of the shower. You may never have thought about it, but these are all examples of the process by which a solid surface holds molecules from a gas or liquid, otherwise known as adsorption.

It would be easy to confuse the term with its scientific cousin, absorption, whereby a fluid is dissolved or permeates a solid or liquid. Think water in a paper towel. But with adsorption, the ions of the fluid stay whole and stick to something solid.

Adsorption happens all the time. It not only occurs naturally every second of every day but is used for a variety of reasons within the industry.  Environmental, petrochemical, and reactive engineering rely on it. As does the biomedical community when making medicines and banking blood. Water purifiers and HVAC systems use it, too.  In fact, without this adsorption process, indoor air purification would not be nearly as effective.

This adsorption process, also called atom adhesion, is the central concept behind indoor air pollution remediation.  Some industries use it for odor control, others to remove toxins. Take, for example, chemical manufacturing. During the course of production, gaseous fume emissions can enter a worker’s breathing space and cause potential health problems. Through the adsorption process, contaminants are removed midair by transferring them to a porous solid via filtration. During the air filtration process, the most commonly used adsorption media (the porous solid) is activated carbon.

Our refillable modules use a variety of adsorption media, including activated carbon, to remove a wide variety of harmful chemical vapors. Our fume extractors are available in both bench-top and mobile designs. Two of our most popular extractors are the S-981-2B bench-top and the S-987-2 mobile model.

At AIRSInc, we serve our customers by providing indoor air quality management solutions in addition to stellar IAQ products. Contact us today for a free air quality assessment with one of our skilled and experienced indoor environmental specialists.