Air Manager Marine - A History of Innovation

Quest International’s AirManager system was developed in the late 1990s initially for use in the health sector. Since then some 5000 units have been supplied to hospitals, nurseries, veterinary premises, quarantine centres and many other sectors.

AirManager has been involved in the search for better air management for a number of years. During this time, David Hallam, MD, has co-ordinated projects, in-house and in collaboration with university departments, approved laboratories, the National Health Service and government. In the process, a great understanding of conventional filter methods was gained, raising concerns with their efficacy, convenience and safety.

It was clear that no existing method addressed the problem in its entirety and the aim was to find the complete solution.

All this work led to an exciting new & revolutionary development – CCFT (Close Couple Field Technology), which is a contained and safe electrical field that kills, destroys and breaks down airborne pathogens, contaminants and toxins.

The main strength of CCFT is its ability to destroy a wide range of contaminants very quickly. Our air treatment systems currently handle air flows from below 100m3 per hour to I excess of 30,000m3 per hour and is eminently scalable beyond these figures, achieving a single-pass kill rate of 99.999% of bio-hazards and removing particles down to below 0.1 micron, which is equivalent to a single particle of cigarette smoke. Our active air treatment systems provide reduction of airborne contaminants to levels far in excess of those achieved by conventional HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filtration.

Broadly speaking, HEPA is only effective to 0.3 micron at face speeds of 0.5 meters per second and its efficiency shows a rapid fall-off as face speeds increase. (n.b. typical virus 0.05 – 0.15 micron).

Our CCFT active air treatment systems can handle face speeds 60 times faster, with no fall in effectiveness.

One manifestation of this advantage can be seen in the dramatic improvement in pressure drop. Conventional HEPA filtration accumulates a high degree of surface impaction, which increases the already large pressure drop inherent in the HEPA configuration. Pressure drops of more than 60% are common with these filters. On the other hand, the initial pressure drop of our filtration system is less than 1% and this has been shown to be constant, even after three months' use. The savings in power costs are obvious and are very substantial in large installations.