How To Clean The Air Inside Your Car

One of the best features of the AirFanta 5Pro and AirFanta 3Pro is its portability aspect – you can put it inside a large tote bag and clean the air outside your home, such as inside your car.

In this blog post, we share some tips and tricks for using an AirFanta room air purifier inside your car to protect yourself from the haze, viruses, or other airborne pathogens.

When should you use an AirFanta room air purifier inside your car?

You can consider using your AirFanta 5Pro or AirFanta 3Pro in two scenarios.

1. Outdoor air pollution, such as the haze. While some newer cars are equipped with particle filters that could filter the outside air and prevent them from entering your car, older cars do not have this functionality. Even if you set the air-conditioning to recirculate the air within the car, PM2.5 particles could still enter the car, as we’ve seen with how the haze could enter spaces where the windows are closed.

2. Reducing the transmission of airborne diseases such as COVID-19 and influenza. If you are concerned about the spread of these viruses especially if someone ill, immunocompromised, or health-conscious is sitting inside your car, you could use an AirFanta room air purifier to greatly reduce the risk of spread.

Steps for using an AirFanta room air purifier inside your car

The first step is simple – you have to bring it into your car and assemble it if its components were taken apart. For convenience, you could have it fully assembled in your home and place it in a tote bag, so you don’t have to assemble it in your car.

Second – you need to find a way to power it. The easiest way is to prepare a power bank (sold separately) that supports at least 12 V, and make sure it has a large capacity so that it can run for hours. You’d also need a DC-to-USB cable (sold separately) to connect your AirFanta room air purifier to the power bank. Alternatively, depending on the car model, you could also connect your air purifier directly to the car, but this will require another type of cable (sold separately).

Third – find a place to put it. You can put it on a seat or in the trunk/boot of your vehicle. If you’re placing it in the trunk/boot, open the lid that connects the trunk/boot to the interior/cabin space so that it can clean the air.

Finally – once you’ve connected the air purifier to your power bank, turn it on and watch as it begins to clean the air in your car.

Tips and tricks

Unlike indoor spaces such as homes and offices, the interior/cabin space of a car is very small, typically between 9 m³ to 15 m³. This means that an AirFanta 3Pro High Efficiency Version at top speed could deliver up to 47 air changes per hour (ACH) of air purification in a 15 m³ car, something that is very difficult to achieve in other settings.

Here are our recommended speed settings:

For outdoor air pollution and other general scenarios, we recommend running your air purifier at top speed for a few minutes after you enter your car, so that it can quickly purge pollutants that entered the car through the door(s) in the air, and then reduce it to a lower speed setting such as 35% speed (AirFanta 5Pro) / Speed Setting 2 (AirFanta 3Pro), equivalent to 16 ACH in a 15 m³ car. 16 ACH is sufficient for outdoor air pollution and general scenarios after purging the air as it is a very high benchmark multiple times beyond the required air changes in hospitals. This would also mean that you can run the air purifier off your power bank for several hours before the battery runs out.
For mitigation against airborne diseases, we recommend setting your air purifier to top speed at all times, as viruses such as COVID-19 are very infectious, so the play would be to maximize the number of air changes per hour. You should also consider adding other strategies (if weather and environment conditions allow), such as cross-window ventilation (opening a front window and back window to allow the air to ventilate diagonally) and disabling recirculation of air inside the car (so it circulates the air out). Other mitigations on an individual level (use of an N95 respirator or a laminar air purifier) could also be considered.

You can check the dimensions of your car by looking up the model online, and check the number of air changes per hour with our calculator.

Last but not least – don’t forget to charge your power bank if you’re planning to use it!