Building the Air Filter Alarm PreventHigh Energy Consumption | TAGUTI air filter exporter

Building the Air Filter Alarm PreventHigh Energy Consumption | TAGUTI air filter exporter

The air filter alarm was built on a breadboard using simple components such as resistors, variable resistors, one integrated circuit (IC), LEDs, and of course the light dependent resistor. A PSpice simulation of the basic circuitry for the alarm can be found at the end of this paragraph. A dirty air filter, one which had been used for exactly 30 days in a typical home, was then used to calibrate the alarm light to go off when it was placed between the LDR and the LED. Although there was no time to test the alarm in a real household over the period of a month, the alarm should go off when the air filter is as dirty as the one with which it was calibrated. It should go off no sooner or later. Sketches of the design of the final alarm to be installed within a household can also be found in the attachments at the end of this report.

Building a Testing Apparatus

A testing apparatus was set up in order to simulate the amount of airflow over an air filter for the period of a month. This testing apparatus was built using a small ventilation fan, 3 feet of ducting, a register box, an air filter, and the alarm itself. The fan was put at one end of the ducting with the air filter at the other end and the alarm was placed with the LED on one side of the air filter and the LDR on the other. According to the energy expert at the Arizona Public Service (APS) Company a very general estimate of the number of hours an air conditioning system runs is 990 hours per year, or 82.5 hours a month.[7] Therefore, it was determined that the fan should run for 82.5 hours before the filter would become clogged enough for the alarm to go off.

Testing the Alarm

On July 3, 2001 the air filter was attached to the end of the testing apparatus, the fan was turned on, and the testing of the air filter alarm began at 9:30 a.m. The fan ran for the full 82.5 hours and the alarm did not go off. There was found to be only a minimal change in the voltages of the alarm circuitry and the air filter itself did not appear dirty at all. This showed that the fault was not with the air filter alarm, but with either the testing apparatus or the calculated hours that it was supposed to run. The following data shows the voltages of the 8 pins on the IC when the filter is clean, when it is dirty, and when it had been run for 82.5 hours on the testing apparatus.

TAGUTI air filter exporter