According to EPA, in the last several years, scientific research has suggested that the indoor air, in which we spend 90% of our time, is more polluted than the outside air. This problem is prevailing even in the largest and most industrialized cities. Thus, the risk to health is conspicuous.

The WHO also agrees that 3% of global disease are resultant of the indoor air pollution and 80% of all cancers are attributed to the environmental factors rather than genetic factor.

The sources of indoor air pollution are – inadequate ventilation, radon that is a noxious gas that causes lung cancer, tobacco smoke, indoor use of paints, cleansers, air fresheners and the use of candles also.

This is an issue that concerns all of us. Air cleaners aren’t effective in removing gaseous pollutants. However, air ionizers can effectively clean gas pollutants and can purify indoor air.

Now days, ACs on the market come with air ionizers mounted in the vicinity of the air outlet. These air ionizers generate negatively charged oxygen and nitrogen ions. These negatively charged ions are beneficial for our body and they also remove dust, odor and gas pollutants from the air.

However, the problem is that the most of the AC appliances have ionizers mounted on a side i.e. either to the left side or to the right hand side of the air outlet. Because of this the effectiveness of air ionizer decreases.

LG is coming with a new AC that will be having an air ionizer that moves along a rail in a horizontal direction and ionizes air effectively. Their patent application is explaining this intriguing tech.

The AC is loaded with other interesting features like the human detection sensor that can be an IR sensor, ultrasound or heat sensor.

The sensor sense and detect the location of a person present in the room. Based on this input the ionizer sends the ionized air along the direction of the person.

How LG’s New AC with Ionizer Purifies Air

The AC consist of ionizer, a controller, a motor that moves the ionizer along the horizontal rail, and the human detection sensor. The human detection sensor (IR or heat sensor) senses the location of a person in the room and sends this information to the controller and the controller determines a range where a person is person with respect to the AC.

After this, the controller sends signals to the motor to adjust the position of the ionizer to send ionized air along the set range. The ionizer generates more ions when it passes the range where the person is present. The controller also adjusts the air flow and increase strength of the air flow along the direction of the person.

In this manner, a person who is present in the room feels maximum comfort as he receives more airflow along his direction and also feels the effect of ionized air. This AC of LG electronics is surely a step forward in making our indoors free from pollutants. This is very beneficial for the people who are suffering from asthma, allergies, impaired immunity or respiratory ailments etc.

In future the ACs are going to be smart. While LG is working on an air ionizer that works based on IR or heat sensor , Mitsubishi is working on an AC that has a face detection sensor that adjusts airflow after detecting faces.