The conventional approach to improve indoor air quality is to ventilate a building with outdoor air. This is a costly and an energy inefficient approach. Ozonation air cleaners have been suggested as an alternative method for indoor applications. Ozone is a powerful oxidizing agent, employment of which has shown a promising prospect in wastewater treatment. However, little is known about the ozonation of a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for indoor environment application. In addition, ozone itself is a problematic product that may seriously threaten people’s health through harming the lung normal function and irritating the respiratory system. Therefore, it is of the upmost necessity to conduct a comprehensive research on the evaluation of the performance of ozonation air cleaners, so that a correct direction of its application prospects can be provided.

This paper presents details of an innovative ozonation duct system which employs ozone producing lamps as an ozone source to exam the ozonation performance under the conditions relevant to the actual applications. Eight types of single compound (toluene, p-xylene, ethanol, 1-butanol, methyl ethyl ketone, acetone, hexane, and octane) are selected as representative indoor air pollutants with an inlet concentration range of 0.5-2 ppm. A systematic parametric evaluation of the effects of various kinetic parameters, including compound type, inlet VOCs concentration, and ozone concentration, is conducted, and new interpretations are provided from a fundamental analysis. Also, the by-products generated from the background test and the ozonation tests are studied in order to have a better understanding of the kinetics and mechanisms involved in the gas-phase ozonation. Experimental results indicate that ozonation process can lead to reductions of tested VOCs in the indoor air environment, which may have a profound impact on ozonation technological developments.