Conventional air purifiers create a low-pressure system inside the unit by using a fan to create turbulent air. What if we were to magnify and extend the turbulence outward, thereby drawing many times the quantity of air and particles into the intake vent? How would we do it?

The TROMBE team has dedicated more than a decade to finding these answers. Often, great inventions come from simple observations of nature. Our solution began by asking the question, “How does an awful tornado suck everything, even heavy cars?”. The answer is the huge pressure differential generated by the vortex of the tornado, creating a vacuum-like effect. This, in turn, creates a high capture velocity, drawing in and capturing what, for our purposes, we can think of as giant "particles," some weighing multiple tons.

The TROMBE Airborne Dust Cleaner was born of this concept, miniaturized to room unit proportions. Instead of a fan that just creates random turbulence inside the unit, what if we created a large, powerful vortex and what if we could project it out in front of the unit to extend the capture zone? This would enable the capture of many more particles, including more of the heavier, capture-resistant particles, like pollens, that trigger the most allergic reactions.

Would the power and placement of the low-pressure system we generate also prevent air diversion toward the exhaust vent?
Finally, could we do this in such a way that the high energy expenditure and noise problems dogging the industry would be avoided?
With these questions in mind, we set to work on a portable, table-top product that would meet all these objectives.

 

The result is the TROMBE Airborne Dust Cleaner.