JPH06126212A - Air cleaner - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To accurately detect the extent of contamination to operate equipment without being affected by the humidity of air. CONSTITUTION:Discharge electrodes 31A, 31B for generating corona discharge installed in an air sending passage 1a are installed and a filter 4 for collecting electrified, contaminated particles is installed downstream of the electrodes. Reference electrodes 32A, 32B for generating corona discharge are installed to pass the air from which dust has been previously removed through them. In a controller, differences in discharge current between the discharge electrodes 31A, 31B and reference electrodes 32A, 32B are detected to control the revolution of a blower 2 accordingly. When the humidity of air is changed, the discharge current of any of the discharge electrodes 31A, 31B and the reference electrodes 32A, 32B is increased and decreased to the same degree. Since the discharge current is changed by the concentration of the contaminated particles as well as the humidity in the discharge electrodes 31A, 31B, the differential discharge current is detected, causing a change in discharge current due to the influence of humidity to be cancelled, allowing the revolution control of the blower based on the concentration of contamination only to be accurately performed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an air purifier, and more particularly to an air purifier that detects the degree of pollution of air and operates properly without being affected by humidity.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The inventor has previously used an electric discharge electrode that charges and collects pollutant particles as a detection electrode for detecting the degree of air pollution, and realizes a reduction in installation space and assembly time. Proposed a purifier (Japanese Patent Application No. 4-1702)
50).

[0003]

The air purifier proposed above detects the degree of air pollution by reducing the corona discharge current of the discharge electrode in accordance with the increase of pollutant particles in the air. Since the corona discharge current also fluctuates depending on the humidity, when the air conditioner is used in a vehicle room where the humidity changes in a relatively wide range, the pollution degree may not be accurately detected.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide an air purifier capable of accurately detecting the degree of pollution without being affected by air humidity.

[0005]

The structure of the present invention will be described. A discharge electrode for providing a corona discharge in a blower flow passage 1a provided with a blower blower 2 and sending out air sucked from one end opening 11 from another end opening 12. 31A and 31B are provided, and a member 4 for collecting the pollutant particles in the air charged when passing through the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B is provided at the downstream position of the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B, while the air from which the pollutant particles have been removed in advance. A reference electrode 32A which causes a corona discharge by circulating
32B is provided, and the control means 5 for detecting the difference between the discharge currents of the discharge electrodes 31A, 31B and the reference electrodes 32A, 32B and controlling the rotation of the blower blower 2 in accordance with this is provided.

[0006]

In the above structure, when the air humidity fluctuates, the influence thereof is that the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B and the reference electrode 32 are affected.
These electrodes 31 and 32B appear equally on both electrodes A and 32B.
The discharge currents of A, 31B, 32A and 32B increase or decrease to the same extent. In the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B, the discharge current changes depending on the concentration of pollutant particles in addition to the humidity. Therefore, by detecting the difference between the discharge currents of the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B and the reference electrodes 32A and 32B, discharge due to the influence of humidity The fluctuation of the current is canceled, and the rotation control of the blower blower is accurately performed based only on the pollution concentration.

[0007]

[First Embodiment] Referring to FIG. 1, a housing 1 of an air purifier.
Has an air flow passage 1a open at both ends in the longitudinal direction, and a blower blower 2 is installed in the housing 1 facing the opening 11 at one end to suck air from the opening 11 and draw the air flow passage 1
It is sent in the downstream direction of a. An ionizer 3 is provided midway in the air flow path 1a, and a collection filter 4 made of charged fibers is provided at the other end opening 12 downstream thereof.

The ionizer 3 has discharge electrodes 31A and 31B.
And reference electrodes 32A and 32B, and the detailed structure thereof is shown in FIG. In the figure, the ionizer 3 has a rectangular frame case 33 made of an insulating resin, and the interior of the frame case 33 is partitioned by a partition wall 34 into an upper half and a lower half of about 2: 1. The discharge electrode 31 of the horizontal metal plate is provided in the upper half part.
A plurality of Bs are provided at intervals in the vertical direction, and a wire-shaped discharge electrode 31A is horizontally stretched at a central position between the discharge electrodes 31B.

The reference electrodes 32A and 32B provided in the lower half of the frame case 33 are also the discharge electrodes 31A and 31 respectively.
It has the same structure as B and has fewer installations. A dust separator 35 for removing smoke particles, which are pollutant particles in the air, is provided at the lower half opening of the frame case 33 on the upstream side of the reference electrodes 32A and 32B. This dust separator 35 has a horizontally long insulating resin frame case 351 detachably fitted in the lower half opening, and a filter 352 made of a long non-woven fabric folded alternately and held therein. The passage of molecules is possible and can be exchanged accordingly.

In FIG. 1, the discharge electrode 31A and the reference electrode 32A are connected to the high voltage power source 6, and the discharge electrode 31B and the reference electrode 32B are connected to the control device 5. From the control device 5, the blower blower 2 according to the level of the discharge current.
A signal for rotating the is output.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the circuit configuration of the control device. The discharge electrodes 31A, 31B and the reference electrode 32A,
The discharge current of 32B is converted into a voltage by the I / V conversion circuits 51A and 51B, and is input to the amplification circuits 53A and 53B through the low pass filters 52A and 52B. Reference electrode 32
Since A and 32B have a small number of electrodes, the discharge current is small accordingly, and the amplification factor of the amplification circuit 53B is increased to balance the amplified signals. As a result, the number of reference electrodes 32A and 32B installed can be reduced and the size thereof can be reduced.

Each amplified signal is input to the differential amplifier circuit 54 and becomes an output signal 54a corresponding to the difference between them, and the integrating circuit 5
5 as well as to the inverting amplifier circuit 56 and the differential amplifier circuit 57. The reason why the signal 54a is integrated is to detect the offset, and the integrated signal 55a
And a signal 5 obtained by inverting and amplifying the signal 54a by the inverting amplifier circuit 56 so as to match the signal inversion by the integrating circuit 55.
6a is input to the differential amplifier circuit 58, and these signals 55
The difference between a and 56a is taken. When this difference exceeds a predetermined value, an instruction signal for shifting to the arbitrarily set high speed rotation is output to the blower blower 2. On the other hand, the signal 54a is compared with the reference signal by the differential amplifier circuit 57, and when it is lower than the reference signal by a certain value or more, an instruction signal for returning to the arbitrarily set low speed rotation is output to the blower blower 2.

In the air cleaner of the above construction, the air passing between the discharge electrodes 31A and 31B and the reference electrodes 32A. 32B
Since the humidity of the air passing between them is the same, each of the electrodes 31
The discharge current values of A, 31B and 32A, 32B show the same tendency and decrease as the humidity increases, as shown by the lines x and y in FIG. Therefore, each of the amplifier circuits 53A and 53A
The difference between these discharge current signals after being amplified by B is almost 0 as shown by the line z in the absence of smoke particles,
The fluctuation of the discharge current due to the humidity change due to the air conditioning in the vehicle interior is canceled.

When smoking starts in the passenger compartment, the discharge electrode 31
Air containing smoke particles flows between A and 31B, and the smoke particles carry away negative ions of corona discharge, so that the discharge current decreases. On the other hand, since the clean air from which the smoke particles have been removed in advance by the dust separator 35 on the upstream side flows through the reference electrodes 32A and 32B, the discharge current is not affected by the smoke particles.

However, as described above, when the difference between the discharge currents of the discharge electrodes 31A, 31B and the reference electrodes 32A, 32B in the control device 5 is taken, it accurately reflects the smoke particle concentration, that is, the degree of pollution. Therefore, if the rotation speed of the blower blower 2 is controlled according to this, unnecessary blower rotation can be avoided and noise reduction and battery load reduction can be realized.

[0016]

Second Embodiment Instead of providing the dust separator 35 of the above embodiment, as shown in FIG. 5, a duct 7 for directly introducing the conditioned air from the air conditioner is connected to the side wall of the housing 1, and this conditioned air is connected. May be supplied between the discharge electrodes 32A and 32B in the lower half of the ionizer 3. In this case, the conditioned air needs to be clean air from which dust and smoke particles have been removed by the filter in the air conditioner, but the humidity in the air flow path 1a into which the air in the vehicle compartment flows is almost the same as the conditioned air. Therefore, the same effect as that of the above embodiment can be obtained.

[0017]

Third Embodiment As shown in FIG. 6, reference electrodes 32A, 32B.
Even if the clean air from which the smoke particles have been removed circulates between the electrodes 32A and 32B by providing the filter at a position downstream of the collection filter, the same effect as in the above-described respective embodiments can be obtained and the dust separator 35 can be obtained. Has the advantage that no installation or connection of the duct 7 is required.

In each of the above embodiments, the discharge electrodes 31A,
By detecting the discharge current difference between 31B and the reference electrodes 32A and 32B, it is possible to remove the error due to the humidity fluctuation and also the error due to the fluctuation of the battery voltage and the ripple of the high voltage power supply.

[0019]

As described above, according to the air purifier of the present invention, it is possible to accurately detect air pollution and operate the air purifier without being affected by the humidity change due to the air conditioning in the passenger compartment. it can.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall schematic cross-sectional view of an air cleaner according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a cutaway perspective view showing an example of an ionizer.

FIG. 3 is a circuit block configuration diagram of a control device.

FIG. 4 is a graph showing humidity dependence of discharge current.

FIG. 5 is an overall schematic sectional view of an air purifier according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an overall schematic sectional view of an air purifier according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Housing 1a Blower flow path 11 One end opening 12 Other end opening 2 Blower blower 3 Ionizer 31A, 31B Discharge electrode 32A, 32B Reference electrode 4 Collection filter (collection member) 5 Control device (control means)

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Makoto Take City 14 Iwatani, Shimohabakucho, Nishio City, Aichi Prefecture Japan Auto Parts Research Institute, Inc.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A discharge electrode for generating a corona discharge is provided in a blower flow passage in which a blower blower is provided and air sucked from one end opening is delivered from the other end opening, and the discharge electrode is provided at a position downstream of the discharge electrode when the discharge electrode passes. A member for collecting the pollutant particles in the charged air is provided, and a part of the discharge electrode is used as a reference electrode, and the air from which the pollutant particles have been removed in advance is circulated in the discharge electrode. An air purifier comprising a control means for detecting a difference and controlling the rotation of the blower blower in accordance with the difference.