InSitu vs. Lab Testing
9:00 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.

Moderator: Emily Moore, Director-Market Development, Nutex Concepts Corporation


Filtration Performance Assessment “In Situ”
Robert Burkhead, President, Blue Heaven Technologies

Quantifying the performance of products has long been an accepted way of making meaningful decisions about the best product to use in a given application. Indoor air quality products and, specifically, air filtration subsets of those products are a typical use of these measurement efforts.

This presentation is targeted at explaining how some new techniques are being used to make more useful judgments and effective assessment of how air filtration products can be analyzed. Examples are given and problems are identified to help the practitioner avoid the mistakes so inherent with field-testing.

Field Testing Using ASHRAE Guideline 26-2008
Don Thornburg, HVAC R&D Manager, Camfil Farr

Many end-use customers want to know how a particular filter will perform in real life conditions but laboratory test results don’t always capture this.  Filter manufacturers began conducting field testing to demonstrate true filter performance to their customers.  These in situ tests became so prevalent that ASHRAE developed Guideline 26.  The speaker will explore the history of this standard and explain how its use is helping customers understand the performance of their filter in an HVAC system.

Opportunities and Pitfalls of In Situ Air Filter Testing
Philip Winters, PE, Director of Product Development, Filtration Group, LLC

Field (in situ) testing of air filters in HVAC systems offers some excellent opportunities to learn things that cannot be easily learned using existing laboratory test methods. However, those opportunities must be weighed against the difficulties associated with getting meaningful in situ data and then interpreting it correctly. The presenter will discuss the types of data that are best obtained in the laboratory versus those that are best obtained in the field. He will also discuss ways to improve the quality of in situ test results.

In-home vs. Lab-based Performance Testing of Residential HVAC Filters
Kevin Kinzer, Laboratory Manager, 3M Home Environment Markets Division

The ASHRAE 52.2 test standard has been in use to characterize HVAC filters since being published in 1999. This standard was developed primarily based on commercial HVAC filters. This presentation will provide a comparison between this standardized laboratory test and characterization of filters used in actual homes. Fractional efficiency changes resulting from standardized artificial loading dust and in-home use will be presented for a variety of different types of residential HVAC filters. The differences in the level of predictability of the standardized test will be explained based on the properties of the filter media and actual in-home challenge aerosol characteristics.