High concentrations of fine particles are increasingly being detected due to inflows from abroad and local emission sources in Korea. As most people spend about 90% of their time indoors, the use of indoor air cleaners has grown significantly as they are now thought to be essential items. In this study, the noise, power consumption, and clean air delivery rate (CADR) of commercial air cleaners were analyzed according to the structural shape of the air cleaners. Analyses were performed based on the experimental results of 249 cases for air cleaners certified by Korea Air Cleaning Association. The air cleaners with front inlet and upper outlet air flow direction, which currently account for the highest market share, were found to have the highest noise per CADR (dB(A)/(m3/min)). On the other hand, the air cleaners with the inlet and outlet air flow in the same horizontal direction were found to have lowest noise per CADR than other structures.

Ventilation devices and room air cleaners can be used to remove indoor contaminants from indoor air. Generally, room air cleaners are rated according to clean air delivery rate (CADR). However, a similar metric for ventilation has not been used to be compared with CADR of room air cleaner. The CADRs and cost-effectiveness metrics (CADR/kw) of ventilation devices and room air cleaners were newly defined and theoretically compared for a child care center. The results indicate that the CADRs of room air cleaner were greater than that of ventilation. A higher collection efficiency for the particles guaranteed a higher CADR for ventilation. Ventilation filter had a performance that exceeds MERV11 should be used to effectively control the indoor particle concentration. The stand alone type air cleaner was found to have the best performance in the cost-effectiveness. The reason for this is that the effective air cleaning ratio of the stand alone type air cleaner is higher than that of the others and the power consumption of the stand alone type air cleaner is lowest.