30 USD air purifier surpasses thousands of devices, making both global famous startup

A little while ago, Quora raised a very good question, which attracted many interesting answers. The question itself is very ordinary and almost everywhere can apply: 'Life tips - Life hack should anyone know?'

In the midst of the answer, there is a bright spot that is very close to Vietnam, and also very practical in an era of air and dust. These are the "golden words" by Thomas Talhelm, assistant professor of Behavior Science, the founder of the Smart Air startup , designing efficient air filters with cheap prices .

Here is the content of Thomas's answer:

This is the trick I made in my bedroom, and then with luck, it found the home of 40,000 families in China and India. At first, I was just trying to solve the problem of myself.

I have a very severe cough. And the air outside my bedroom door looks like this:

I was living in the 'apocalyptic atmosphere' between Beijing, and finally understood why the winter of that year, I had coughs and colds every week.

The Guardian reports on the alarming pollution situation in Beijing.

I think this problem is also simple. It's okay to buy an air purifier! Until you see the air purification device that everyone still has each ear is priced up to 2,000 USD!

Even cheap machines cost up to $ 500. I am a poor student, spending money on psychology research, getting financial resources to decorate my bedroom with an expensive air purifier.

But I 'sniffed' the smell of scams myself. Is it true that the air purification system costs thousands of dollars? This is when I can risk my assertion that I have researched this issue in depth, but if I say so, it is just too much. All the information I found is already available on the Wikipedia page.

The link to HEPA, the performance standard index of an air filtration system, stands for highly efficient airborne particle absorption.

• A HEPA filter will store 99% of dust particles of size less than 0.3 micrometers.

• The HEPA filter was invented in the 40s.
• The inventor of it did not register the copyright, so anyone can make an air filter for themselves.
• The price is very cheap, because the filter material is synthetic fiber, which is like a backpack fabric or a backpack fabric.

By the way, studying in China and having a favorable factor, I found a factory producing HEPA filters. Order to door with price of 15 USD and attach to home fan.

Not very beautiful. Since there is nowhere to hang the air purifier, I use a tape measure to tie two things together.

I have all the essential components of an air purifier in hand, so it will theoretically work. But is it really working? I spent 30 dollars to make the filter, and tried to hook up another $ 300 to buy a laser airborne particle cleaner (this is the cheapest model I could find).

The step is not very wise, but I want to confirm my discovery. After 5 weeks of running the fan, the amount of dust on the filter is quite significant.

But I want to know if the air purifier catches ultra-fine dust particles that can go deep into human lungs. Measuring equipment worth 300 USD will help me answer that question.

This is the result of my air purifier, when I turned it on in the bedroom for more than 8 hours.

I constantly tried the new device, for a hundred days, in a room with a strict control system, using a more powerful fan to cope with air purifiers coming from major airlines - stuff. I borrowed from richer friends. Then I also gathered enough data to confirm that I was successful.The $ 30 homemade air purifier is capable of filtering out the majority of micro dust in my bedroom.

I want to tell the world that thousands of dollar-filtering machines are fraudulent. I have opened the source of all the data I have, all the testing methods I do. I wrote instructions on how to make an air purifier.

I thought only a few backpackers would pay attention to this product. But it turns out that the number of people facing the problem of dirty air is more than I thought!

One fine day, I saw The Atlantic in my article on my little air purifier.

And then Bloomberg is also eyeing.

And this is my face .

I find my trick simple too, but gradually receive emails written in confusion.'I didn't find that kind of fan! Can I use this fan instead? '

Then 'Good idea, but I'm too lazy, don't want to make one myself!'

So I and my two friends set up a website, taking responsibility for transferring the air purifiers we made to all over China. We named the project Smart Air.

That is the story of 6 years ago. At this point, I have been able to transfer cheap fake air purifiers to 40,000 people across China.

And because not only China faces air pollution, we launch Smart Air in India, Mongolia and the Philippines. I am trying to raise funds to run a low-cost global air filter project.

During that time, I completed my Master's degree, my daily job is still a psychologist. I am not an air pollution specialist, just a stubborn nerd who has a problem, then finds out that not only do I scratch my head with that problem.

I didn't expect that my home-made project could find its way to people's homes. Perhaps 'nerd' also has its advantages.

Wish you safe breathing!