Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389

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Building and Environment

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Assessing the impact of filtration systems in indoor environments

with effectiveness
Tianyuan Li a, Jeffrey A. Siegel a, b, *
a
Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
b
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Effectiveness is commonly used to evaluate the particle removal performance of residential filtration systems.
Residential HVAC system Previous investigations have used various effectiveness metrics to assess system performance through modeling
Exposure reduction efforts. However, the model assumptions often lead to an overestimation of effectiveness. Further, none of the
Runtime
studies considered the impact of realistic residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system
Cycle on-times
Effectiveness metrics
operation patterns. In this investigation, we evaluated the strength and limitations of various effectiveness
metrics. We identified exposure reduction as the most appropriate metric for modeling analyses because it does
not rely on any steady-state assumptions. A time-varying mass balance model that accounts for system operation
parameters including runtimes and cycle on-times, and the impact of indoor emission sources is used to simulate
the changes in indoor particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) concentration with and without system
operation. The effectiveness results show that runtime has the biggest impact on exposure reduction. At a fixed
runtime, short cycle on-times and the coincidence of system operation with emission events can further improve
the removal performance of the system. Thus, the particle removal performance of a filtration system can be
optimized by changing its operation pattern while still maintaining similar fan energy use.

1. Introduction the impact of such a system on particle concentration in an indoor

Exposure to high levels of PM2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5
μm) has been associated with adverse human health effects (e.g.,
Ref. [1–4]). Because North Americans spend nearly 90% of their time
indoors and almost 70% of the time at home [5–7], much of this expo­
sure occurs indoors and in residences. Particles in indoor environments
can be transported from outdoor air through enclosure leaks and/or
mechanical ventilation systems (e.g. Ref. [8–11]), and generated from a
variety of indoor sources including cooking, smoking, cleaning, indoor
chemical reactions, and various biological sources. Particle filtration
systems, including filters in central forced-air heating, ventilation, and
air conditioning (HVAC) systems and portable air cleaners are widely
used to reduce indoor particle concentrations.
The particle removal performance of these filtration systems is often
characterized by their efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is the
fraction of particles that are removed from the air on a single pass
through a filtration system, which is mainly dependent on filter prop­
erties (e.g. Ref. [12,13]), and system and dust loading conditions
including face velocity and relative humidity [14–16]. Effectiveness is
environment, which is dependent on the filtration efficiency, as well as
the airflow rate through the filtration system and the indoor environ­
mental properties including particle source position, deposition, air
change rate, and airflow pattern. Based on this definition, previous in­
vestigations have used various effectiveness metrics to assess the impact
of filtration and air cleaning (i.e., devices that removes particles through
mechanisms other than filtration) technologies through a combination
of measurements and modeling efforts (e.g., Ref. [17–29]).
While these earlier studies have helped to characterize the perfor­
mance of the filtration systems, most of the modeling investigations
relied on relatively simple input parameters, steady-state or time-
averaged assumptions, and/or accounted only for particle loss mecha­
nisms. The temporal variations in both particle sources and losses were
not considered and this often leads to an overestimation of filtration
effectiveness. These studies also mainly focused on outdoor particle
sources because the epidemiological literature has focused on health
effects associated with ambient particle levels. Few of them accounted
for the particles generated by indoor activities, which depends on
occupant behavior, is time-varying, and could contribute significantly to

* Corresponding author. Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, 35 St. George St., Toronto, ON, M5S 1A4, Canada.
E-mail address: jeffrey.siegel@utoronto.ca (J.A. Siegel).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107389
Received 18 July 2020; Received in revised form 14 October 2020; Accepted 17 October 2020
Available online 20 October 2020
0360-1323/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
indoor particle concentrations (e.g., Ref. [30]). Moreover, the existing
studies, time-averaged or time-varying, generally ignore the impact of
realistic residential HVAC system operation pattern, which can be
characterized by both system runtime and cycle on-time. The system
runtime (also referred to as duty cycle in some studies) is the fraction of
time the HVAC system operates. In most North American homes, the
forced-air systems are typically designed to cycle on and off to meet
conditioning demand. The runtimes vary greatly among these homes
because of differences in climate, system design, and user preference.
Although fan-only operation (i.e., independent of conditioning) is
allowed by most thermostats, the runtimes of these systems are gener­
ally low. In a recent study, Touchie and Siegel [26] reported an 18%
median runtime in over 7000 North American homes based on smart
thermostat data. The cycle on-time, which is the duration of the system
on-time of each cycle, also varies greatly among homes because of dif­
ferences in system design and conditioning mode. For systems that
operate to meet conditioning needs, the cycle on-times are also generally
too short for the indoor particle concentration to reach a steady state.
Because of these two parameters, the realistic impact of HVAC systems
on indoor particle concentration may not be well-simulated by some
previous models; thus, questions remain about the actual particle
removal performance of HVAC systems in real residences. Further,
because effectiveness is a relative metric, even small effectiveness
changes could lead to a big difference in particle concentration and
occupant exposure, especially in homes with high particle
concentrations.
The present investigation evaluates the exposure reduction impact of
residential forced-air systems on PM2.5 through modeling. Our approach
uses a time-varying mass balance model that accounts for input pa­
rameters including indoor sources, runtimes, and cycle on-times to
simulate the indoor concentration changes in a transient-state. The
primary objective of this work is to investigate the impact of filtration-
system related parameters on exposure reduction. The secondary
objective is to evaluate the strength and limitations of the effectiveness
metrics used in earlier work. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide
a transient-state framework with an adequate effectiveness metric to
evaluate the actual performance of the residential filtration system and
provide guidance on performance improvement.
2. Effectiveness metrics
In the literature, previous studies have applied various effectiveness
metrics on field measurements or modeled parameters to evaluate
filtration system performance. In these metrics, the baseline is either
defined as the concentration (or particle loss rate) without any system
operation, or with system operation but with a lower efficiency filter
installed in the system, depending on a specific investigation. The reason
for the metric selection was rarely discussed. In the following section, we
summarized five metrics and discussed the assumptions, strengths, and
limitations of these metrics when used in modeling analyses.
2.1. Exposure reduction (R)
Equation (1) shows exposure reduction (R), the filtration effective­
ness of the system, calculated by subtracting the ratio of mean indoor
concentration with filtration system operation to the mean indoor con­
centration for the same scenario but without any system operation
(baseline) from unity. One key strength of Equation (1) in modeling
analyses is that it does not rely on the assumptions of constant sources/
losses parameters or continuous filtration system operation. The use of
mean concentrations in Equation (1) allows exposure reduction to ac­
count for the changes in concentrations due to temporal variations in
sources and losses and reflect them in the resulting filtration effective­
ness. Further, if we assume that the breathing rate of an individual
occupant is constant, the ratio of the mean concentration in Equation (1)
equals to the ratio of the total inhalation exposure of the occupant. Thus,
2
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
this metric also represents the reduction in occupant inhalation expo­
sure to airborne contaminants.
/
R = 1 − Csystem Cnosystem (1)
where:
Csystem = mean concentration of the scenario with system operation
(μg⋅m− 3),
Cno system = mean concentration from the baseline, which is the same
scenario but without any system operation (μg⋅m− 3).
Equation (1) has been used in some previous modeling studies [19,
24,25,28,29,31], although with different baselines. In these studies, the
baseline scenarios have the same system operation status as the evalu­
ated interventions but with lower efficiency filters installed in the sys­
tems. In this work, we selected no system operation as the baseline
because the primary focus of this work is to evaluate the impact of
filtration system operation, instead of filter efficiency which has been
well investigated in the literature.
2.2. Other effectiveness metrics in the literature
In addition to exposure reduction, we summarized the other four
effectiveness metrics that have been used in the literature and their
corresponding studies in Table 1. The first three metrics in Table 1 uti­
lize time-averaged assumptions, while the last one, similar to exposure
reduction (R), could also be applied to transient scenarios. The theo­
retical effectiveness (H) is the most commonly used metric in the liter­
ature for modeling analyses. Without consideration of runtime, it is used
to estimate the theoretically maximum impact of the operation of a
filtration system compared to the no system scenario. In real life, H can
be achieved if a system is operating continuously. However, as discussed
earlier, it is rarely the case for residential filtration systems. The runtime
influenced effectiveness (RIE) is therefore used to account for the impact
of runtime (t) by multiplying the filtration system loss rate by the run­
time in the denominator. It could provide a more realistic estimation of
system impact as it does not rely on the assumption of continuous
operation. A similar form of this metric is the runtime factored effec­
tiveness (H′ ). It has a distinct way to account for the impact of runtime
by multiplying the theoretical effectiveness of the system by its frac­
tional operation time (i.e., runtime). Both RIE and H′ are equivalent to H
when the runtime is either 0 or 100% but differ for any runtime values in
between. Although H′ was not used in previous studies, it is included in
Table 1 for comparison purposes. Lastly, median effectiveness (Hmedian)
is similar to exposure reduction (R) except for the fact that it uses
Table 1
Summary of effectiveness metrics used in previous modeling studies.
Metric Equations Study
Theoretical effectiveness H = 1 − (λi + β)/(λi + β + λr η) (2) [17,20,22,
(H) 25,27,31]
Runtime influenced RIE = 1 − (λi + β)/(λi + β + λr ηt) (3) [18,26]
effectiveness (RIE)
Runtime factored H = H× t
′
(4)
Effectiveness (H′ )
Median effectiveness Hmedian = 1 − Csystem, median / (5) [21]
(Hmedian) Cno system, median
where:
λi = air exchange rate due to natural ventilation (hr− 1),
β = particle deposition rate (hr− 1),
λr = recirculation rate through a central forced-air HVAC system (hr− 1),
η = filtration system efficiency (%),
t = runtime (%),
Csystem, median = median concentration of the scenario with system operation (μg⋅m− 3),
Cno system, median = median concentration from the baseline, which is the same scenario
without any system operation (μg⋅m− 3).
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
median concentrations instead of mean concentrations, to evaluate
filtration performance.
In this work, we applied all the five effectiveness metrics (R, H, RIE,
H′ , and Hmedian) to simulated concentrations to explore the differences
between metrics. For all five metrics discussed above, we consider R to
be the most appropriate metric when estimating particle removal per­
formance of a filtration system for the following two reasons. First, R
does not rely on the time-averaged assumptions like H, RIE, and H′ .
Second, R uses the mean concentration, which is the integral of the
concentration over time divided by the duration of the simulation.
Because the total inhalation exposure of an occupant is the integral of
the product of concentration and breathing rate over time, R better
represents the actual inhalation exposure reduction of occupant than
Hmedian, which uses the median concentration.
3. Methodology
To calculate exposure reduction and the effectiveness metrics sum­
marized in Section 2, we estimated the indoor PM2.5 concentration for
varying indoor scenarios with and without filtration system operation
through modeling analyses.
3.1. Mass balance model framework
A time-varying mass-balance model was used to estimate the indoor
concentrations (C) of PM2.5 based on the previous time step (tn-1) in
residences using Equation (6). The model assumes a well-mixed indoor
environment with both indoor and outdoor particle sources, first-order
loss process, and a central forced-air HVAC system without dedicated
outdoor air supply (as is typically the case in North American homes).
We also assumed that all the input parameters, except for the filtration
system-related parameters (L2 and SO), are the same for each pair of
with and without (i.e., baseline) system operation simulations. This
assumption is to ensure that difference in concentration is caused only
by the system operation. The initial concentration (C0) of the model is
assumed to be the time-averaged concentration of the same scenario
without any system operation and the length of each simulation is set to
be 24 h. In addition, this model framework does not consider the impact
of window or door opening. Although window opening plays an
important role in exposure modeling due to its impact on the air ex­
change rate, we neglected this behavior to reduce variations and focus
on the filtration system impact. The input parameters of this model are
described in detail in Section 3.2. All dynamic indoor air mass balance
simulations in this work are conducted using Stata Version 16 [32].
/ (
C(tn ) = C(tn− 1 ) × e− (L1 +L2 ⋅SO)Δt + S (L1 + L2 ⋅ SO)⋅ 1 − e− (L1 +L2 ⋅SO)Δt
where:
C(tn) = indoor PM2.5 concentration of particles at the current time
step (μg⋅m− 3),
L1 = the summation of particle loss rate due to particle removal
mechanisms including indoor and outdoor air exchange and depo­
sition without system operation (hr− 1), calculated from Equation (7),
L2 = particle loss rate due to filtration system operation (hr− 1),
calculated from Equation (8),
SO = HVAC system operation status in the previous time step, 1 for
system on and 0 for system off, characterized by system runtime and
cycle on-time,
S = the summation of volume normalized indoor and outdoor par­
ticle sources (μg⋅m− 3hr− 1), calculated from Equation (9),
Δt = the time interval between time steps, 1 min.
In the model framework, systems are set to cycle on and off to
simulate a typical residential forced-air HVAC system. The length of
each system-on and system-off time is assumed to be constant
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
throughout the simulation and a full cycle is considered to be the system-
on time (i.e., cycle on-time) plus the system off-time. Because runtime is
the fraction of time the HVAC system operates, the duration of a full
cycle can be calculated by dividing the cycle on-time by runtime. For
each simulation, the system is assumed to start operation at the begin­
ning of the simulation. The potential impacts of this assumption of
system operation on the simulation results are discussed in more detail
in Section 4.2. The system operation status (SO) for each time step is
determined based on the cycle on-time and full-cycle duration.
L1 = λi + β (7)
L2 = λr η (8)
S = λi PCout + E/V⋅ES (9)
where:
Cout = mean daily outdoor particle concentration (μg⋅m− 3),
P = building envelope penetration factor (fraction),
ES = emission status for time-varying indoor sources in the previous
time step, determined by the duration and the start time of each
emission event, 1 if there was a source present, 0 if there was none.
3.2. Model input parameters
We divided our input parameters into three categories: filtration
system-related, non-system related, and particle source-related. In doing
so, we were able to isolate the impact of the filtration system from other
influencing factors. For each input parameter, a statistical distribution
was collected and used in a Monte Carlo simulation of Equation (6) to
examine the range of the impact of the HVAC systems with varying
parameters in homes. In addition to the Monte Carlo simulation, single-
value simulations that used the mean or geometric mean of normally- or
lognormally-distributed parameters, respectively, were conducted to
reduce variations and clearly illustrate the impact of individual pa­
rameters on effectiveness.
3.2.1. Filtration system-related parameters
The filtration system-related parameters include runtime, cycle on-
time, recirculation rate (λr), and filtration system efficiency (η). In a
recent study, Touchie and Siegel [26] reported runtimes measured by
smart thermostats from over 7000 homes across most Canadian prov­
inces and US states. It is by far the largest dataset available for measured
residential runtime and is consistent with other runtime measurement
)
(6) studies. A lognormal distribution (GM = 18.2%, GSD = 2.3, limited to
the range of 0–100%) was fit to their reported data by minimizing the
sum of the squared errors between the reported values and the
lognormal distribution function. It is important to note that with the
boundaries, the resulting distribution is no longer lognormally distrib­
uted, but it is a reasonable simulation of the realistic runtime mea­
surements. Two concerns of this dataset are that it might not be entirely
representative as only a fraction of homes in North America currently
uses a smart thermostat and that the use of smart thermostat likely
underestimated runtimes [26]. This distribution is slightly lower than
the runtime distribution (GM = 24.6%, GSD = 1.85) used in El Orch
et al. [33] possibly due to the underestimation associated with smart
thermostats, but it is more likely because El Orch et al. [33] relied on a
sample of homes and light commercial buildings located in
cooling-dominated US states, which generally have higher runtimes. The
chosen distribution is higher than the median runtime (9.6%) from 20
heating-dominated homes in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in Li et al. [23]
due to mild weather during the yearlong field study.
As discussed earlier, cycle on-time is an important parameter that has
been overlooked in previous similar studies. It is defined as the duration
of time the system (or the fan) operates during each cycle. In the
3
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
literature, cycle on-time (or sometimes referred to as cycle time) is
mainly investigated to evaluate the dehumidification performance of air
conditioners (e.g. Ref. [34]), instead of particle removal performance,
and the measurements are scarce. Thornburg et al. [35] reported a mean
cycle on-time of 10 min based on data collected for a total of 215 days of
measurements from homes in both heating and cooling mode in North
Carolina. Stephens et al. [36] reported a longer mean cycle on-time of
18.3 min for a total of 54 days of measurements from 8 residential
buildings in the cooling season in Austin, Texas. It is worth noting that
both previously reported on-times are generally not long enough for the
indoor particle concentration to reach a steady state. For lack of a more
robust dataset, we rely on the measurements of cycle on-time from the
20 Toronto homes in Li et al. [23] and fit a lognormal distribution with a
GM of 6.11 min (GSD = 2.28). Although the lognormal distribution does
not fit these data perfectly, it fits better than other reasonable distri­
butions that we have tried. The range of this distribution is limited to be
at least longer than 2 min based on observations of the shortest cycles in
the study. On-times longer than 100 min, which were caused by the
continuous fan-only operation, were also excluded because they repre­
sented a small fraction (0.8%) of the operation patterns and are due to
user preference. Similar to the runtime distribution, the resulting
on-time distribution with the boundaries is no longer lognormally
distributed, but it reflects the realistic operation patterns of HVAC sys­
tems. It is worth to note that these data might not be entirely repre­
sentative of the residential systems in North America because they are
solely collected from a small sample of homes in a heating-dominated
climate and the heating cycle on-times are generally shorter when
compared to cooling cycle on-times. We will further discuss the impact
of this selection of cycle on-time distribution on effectiveness in Section
5.2.
Recirculation rate (λr) is the volume of airflow through the HVAC
system relative to the volume of the space it serves in. We rely on a
lognormal distribution (GM = 4.36 h− 1, GSD = 1.44) calculated by Fisk
and Chan [37] from a total of 32 residential and small commercial
buildings from two studies [39,40]. This distribution is similar to the
values (GM = 4.3 h− 1, GSD = 1.4) used in Touchie and Siegel [26] from
54 homes, and slightly lower than the distribution (GM = 5.7 h− 1, GSD
= 1.26) used in El Orch et al. [33]; which only relied on the sample of
cooling-dominated buildings in Stephens et al. [40].
3.2.2. Non-system related parameters
The non-system related parameters include air change rate (λi),
deposition rate (β), and penetration (P). Although home volume is a
building characterization parameter, it is categorized as a source-related
parameter as emission rate (E) is correlated with home volume while all
the other non-source related parameters are independent of it, and thus
described in Section 3.2.3.
Air change rate (λi) due to infiltration varies widely across buildings
and temporarily even within the same building [41–44]. Because of the
large variations, we rely on the modeled distribution of air change rate
estimated by Persily et al. [45] based on a sample of 209 dwellings that
represent 80% of U.S. housing stock. A lognormal distribution (GM =
0.44 h− 1, GSD = 2.04) was fitted by El Orch et al. [33] to the distribution
in Persily et al. [45]; and was used for simulation in this work.
For deposition rate (β) to indoor surfaces, like some of the previous
PM2.5 simulation studies (e.g. Ref. [26]), we rely on a normal distribu­
tion of deposition rates (mean = 0.42 h− 1, SD = 0.19) calculated by
Williams et al. [46] in 37 homes using air change rate measurements.
The distribution is limited to a range of 0.1–0.8 h− 1 based on the min­
imum and maximum values. For PM2.5 penetration (P), we relied on the
same study [46] and used a normal distribution with a mean (±SD) of
0.72 (±0.21), limited to the range of 0 to 1.
3.2.3. Particle source-related
We categorized particle source-related parameters based on the
origin (i.e., indoor or outdoor) of the particles. As discussed earlier,
4
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
indoor sources are often not considered in previous studies (e.g. Ref. [9,
33]), likely because the epidemiological literature has focused on
ambient particles. Indoor PM2.5 is emitted from a wide variety of
emission events and occupant activities such as cooking, smoking,
dusting and vacuuming, use of humidifiers and aromatic products, and
secondary aerosol formation from ozone/terpene reactions [47–50]. The
frequency and strength of these sources also vary greatly among
households and events within the same household. As a result, it is
extremely challenging to accurately characterize time-resolved indoor
emissions without a large dataset of source frequencies and schedules.
Chan et al. [30] used an identification and characterization algorithm to
quantify time-resolved PM2.5 emission events from 18 apartments in
California over 224 days. The authors quantified the duration and
strength of 836 distinct emission events and established a diurnal fre­
quency of the events. In this work, we rely on the findings from Chan
et al. [30] and simulated the time-varying indoor emission events based
on three parameters including emission rate (E), home volume (V), and
emission status (ES). The emission rate (E) follows a lognormal distri­
bution with a GM of 40 mg/h (GSD = 3.9). Because emission rate is
found to be significantly correlated with home volume (V), we used the
mean floor area (94.7 m2) reported in Chan et al. [30] and an assumed
mean ceiling height of 2.74 m to estimate the mean home volume (259
m3). The emission status (ES) is determined by both the duration and the
start time of each emission event. The former parameter was retrieved
from the diurnal fraction of hours with identified emission events for
weekday and weekend reported in Chan et al. [30]. The latter parameter
was randomly selected for each hour from a uniform distribution of
possible start times (ranging from the first minute of the hour to the last
minute that an emission event could happen to satisfy the former
parameter) to model the events stochastically. It is important to note
that a constant emission rate (randomly selected from the aforemen­
tioned emission rate distribution) is assumed for all events that
happened within an individual 24-h simulation scenario. This assump­
tion is not realistic, but it was made to minimize the uncertainties
introduced by the temporal variations in emission rate (as well as other
parameters) to focus on filtration system impact.
We accounted for particles of outdoor origin by using the mean daily
outdoor particle concentration (Cout). To put the impact of filtration
system in context, we considered two cities, Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
which generally has low ambient PM2.5 concentrations, and New Delhi,
India, which on the contrary, is heavily polluted. For both Toronto and
New Delhi, a lognormal distribution was fit to the mean daily concen­
tration measurements over a year [51,52], resulting in a GM of 6.5 μg
m− 3 (GSD = 1.77) and a GM of 92.5 μg m− 3 (GSD = 2.07), respectively.
4. Results
Based on the model framework and input parameters established, we
estimated 24-h concentration changes through Monte Carlo simulations
first with a time-averaged continuous indoor particle source and then
with time-varying indoor emission events. The effectiveness metrics
were determined based on Equations (1)–(5) and the differences be­
tween effectiveness metrics were investigated. We also specifically
examined the impact of individual parameters on exposure reduction
(R), runtime influenced effectiveness (RIE), and median effectiveness
(Hmedian) with both single-value simulations as well as Monte Carlo
simulations.
4.1. Difference between effectiveness metrics
Because time-varying sources introduce fluctuations into the effec­
tiveness results due to concurrence of system operation and emission
events, we first conducted a set of simulations with a constant, contin­
uous indoor source to clearly illustrate the differences between effec­
tiveness metrics. The impact of this assumption is discussed in more
detail in Section 4.3. The emission rate of this continuous source is
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
assumed to be the time-averaged hourly emission rate (12.67 mg h− 1)
calculated by spreading the geometric mean of the emission rates (40
mg h− 1) of the emission events (GM = 19 min) reported in Chan et al.
[30] over an hour. To evaluate the impact of input parameters, we
conducted a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate concentrations with
and without system operations as a function of each independent
parameter. For each value of the independent parameter, the concen­
trations were calculated 1000 times with random sampling of the other
input parameters from the distributions described in Section 3.2. Fig. 1
(a) and (b) show the simulated range (the middle two quartiles) of
effectiveness results as a function of runtime and cycle on-time, varied
over the range from 0 to 100% (at 1% step) and 0 to 100 min (at a 1-min
step) for Toronto, respectively (companion Fig. S1 a and b for New Delhi
are available in the Supplementary Materials). The cycle on-time in
Fig. 1 (a) and runtime in Fig. 1 (b) had a lognormal distribution with a
GM of 6.11 min (GSD = 2.28, bound between 2 and 100 min) and a
lognormal distribution with a GM of 18.2% (GSD = 2.3, limit to 100%),
respectively.
In Fig. 1 (a), all effectiveness metrics except theoretical effectiveness
(H) increase as a function of runtime. H is considerably higher than the
rest of effectiveness metrics, especially at lower runtimes. This trend is
expected as H is the theoretically maximum effectiveness of system
operation and is runtime independent. Both the runtime influenced
effectiveness (RIE) and median effectiveness (Hmedian) are very similar to
exposure reduction (R), although the former always slightly over­
estimate effectiveness at all runtime values. This overestimation is
caused by the steady-state assumption that is utilized by RIE. With this
underlying assumption, RIE calculates an equivalent mean concentra­
tion for the system operation scenario based on the particle loss rate in
the denominator. This mean concentration underestimates the actual
mean concentration that is calculated as the time-weighted average
concentration (i.e., the integral of concentration over time divided by
the duration of the simulation). Surprisingly, there is such little differ­
ence between RIE and R given that the steady-state assumption, which
RIE is dependent on, is not met in our model framework. The reason for
this trend is discussed in the paragraph below. Fig. 1 (a) also shows that
runtime factored effectiveness (H′ ), while it accounts for runtime by
multiplying the theoretically maximum performance (i.e., H) by the
runtime, is only a close estimation of R at extremely low or high run­
times, making it a less than ideal metric for system performance
evaluation.
Fig. 1 (b) shows greater differences between R, RIE, and Hmedian as a
function of cycle on-time. Similar to Fig. 1 (a), RIE always overestimates
R because of the steady-state assumption. In Fig. 1 (b), it is also clear that
Hmedian always underestimates R. It is due to the fact that for the with
system operation scenario, the median concentration was always higher
than the mean concentration because of the low runtimes (GM =
18.2%). As the cycle on-time increases, the difference between the
metrics also increases. At lower cycle on-times (below 10 min), there is
5
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
Fig. 1. Effectiveness results from five effectiveness
metrics (R, H, RIE, H′ , and Hmedian) as a function of (a)
system runtime; and (b) cycle on-time, over 24-h
simulation with time-averaged indoor emission
source for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The central solid
line represents the median effectiveness values and
the shaded areas represent the 25th and 75th
percentile range from the Monte Carlo simulations.
All the other input parameters were sampled 1000
times for each value of the independent parameter
from distributions described in Section 3.2 to calcu­
late concentrations.
no noticeable difference between RIE and R; however, at a cycle on-time
of 100 min (although unlikely to happen in most systems operating to
meet conditioning demand only), the absolute difference between the
median values of RIE (or Hmedian) and R is greater than 10%. This trend
explains why there is minimal difference between RIE and R in Fig. 1 (a),
as the cycle on-time distribution used in the simulations has a geometric
mean of 6.1 min.
In both Fig. 1 (a) and (b), we can also observe a large variation in R.
This large range shows that even for systems with a MERV 14 electret
filter installed in them, a wide range of effectiveness is expected among
homes because of variations in recirculation rate, deposition, and air
change rate. When comparing the two figures, we can also observe
greater variations in R for a given cycle on-time (in Fig. 1 b), indicating
that runtime has a greater influence on filtration system performance
when compared to cycle on-time.
The most important point demonstrated by this set of simulations is
that R decreases as a function of cycle on-time (as shown in Fig. 1b).
Thus, for any system, at a given runtime and consequently, with similar
energy consequences, we can get more benefits from filtration (i.e.,
higher exposure reduction) with shorter system-on cycles. However, it is
also important to note that even with high efficiency filters installed in
them, the exposure reduction of systems with relatively low runtime
(GM = 18.2%) is bounded at approximately 30%, and this value is
consistent with previous investigations [18,26]. Further, short
system-on cycles can also cause other issues related to the heating and
cooling devices such as waste of residual heat [53], degradation of
moisture removal capacity [34], and equipment wear.
Fig. 2. Exposure reduction (R), runtime influenced effectiveness (RIE), and
median effectiveness (Hmedian) as a function of L2/L1 ratio over 24-h simulation
for Toronto.
T. Li and J.A. Siegel Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389

4.2. Impact of parameters on effectiveness (single-value simulation) emission rates will impact Hmedian and R. We will discuss the impact of
the time-varying emission rate in more detail in Section 4.3.
As shown in Fig. 1, among all effectiveness metrics, runtime influ­ In addition to these three input parameters, we also investigated the
enced effectiveness (RIE) and median effectiveness (Hmedian) yield the impact of simulation artifacts including initial concentration (C0), initial
most similar results when compared to exposure reduction (R). To system operation status, incomplete operation cycles, and simulation
further examine the role of each parameter beside system runtime and time. In our model framework, we assumed the system-off time-aver­
cycle on-time on these three metrics, we conducted 24-hr single-value aged concentration to be the initial concentration. A higher initial
simulations using the mean of normally-distributed parameters and concentration would have no impact on RIE, but it would lead to higher
the geometric mean of lognormally-distributed parameters. The goal of R and Hmedian, indicating that operating the filtration system in a home
these single-value simulations was to smooth the effectiveness curve by with higher initial concentration is more beneficial. Initial system
reducing variations associated with the input parameters to clearly operation status has no impact on the three effectiveness metrics when
demonstrate the impact of the independent parameter in question. Fig. 2 the system-off time-averaged concentration is used as the initial con­
shows the results of R, RIE, and Hmedian, as a function of L2/L1 ratio (i.e., centration. However, if a higher (or lower) initial concentration was
system loss rate over non-system loss rate). Similar to Section 4.1, a used, assuming system operation at the start of the simulation would
constant indoor emission rate (12.67 mg h− 1) is assumed for these also lead to higher (or lower) R and Hmedian when compared to RIE,
simulations. respectively. Through our investigation, we found that incomplete
Fig. 2 shows that all three effectiveness metrics (Hmedian overlaps operation cycles (i.e., the system-on cycle is not completed by the end of
with R) increase as L2/L1 ratio increases, but this increase reduces the simulation) cause periodic fluctuations in both R and Hmedian since
gradually at higher L2/L1 ratios. This trend is expected as effectiveness the actual runtime of the simulation was lower than the assumed value.
increases when the removal due to the filtration system is more Fig. S3 (a) shows an example of the impact of incomplete cycles with 24-
important than other removal mechanisms. However, RIE constantly h single-value simulation. Lastly, simulation time has no impact on any
overestimates R, especially at higher L2/L1 ratios. As discussed earlier in of the three effectiveness metrics. However, a longer simulation time
Section 4.1, the overestimation of RIE is caused by the underestimation would reduce the impact of initial concentration, initial operation sta­
of the equivalent mean concentration when compared to the time- tus, and incomplete operation cycles (shown in Figure S3 b).
weighted average concentration. Further, because of the low runtime
(18.2%), the time-weighted average concentration is dominated by the
system-off concentration. Consequently, at high L2/L1 ratios, the in­
crease in R becomes smaller because the performance of a filtration
system is bounded by its runtime, as opposed to its loss rate. Even with
the low runtimes, RIE becomes less realistic and gradually approaches
100% as the total loss rate in the denominator in Equation (3) continues
increasing. The difference between R and RIE would be even greater
with increases in cycle on-time and would be smaller with increases in
runtime (the impact of these two parameters is shown in Fig. S2). This
trend shows that an increase in filtration system removal rate may not
necessarily lead to greater exposure reduction. Both high runtimes and
short cycle on-times are important for filtration system performance.
From the single-value simulations, we also found that neither the
mean daily outdoor concentration nor the time-averaged hourly indoor
emission rate has any impact on all three effectiveness metrics. These
results show the effectiveness (regardless of metric) of a given system in
a given home is not influenced by the strength of indoor or outdoor
sources. This trend is expected as the steady-state and time-averaged
assumptions are satisfied in these single-value simulations, and thus
both the R and Hmedian equations (Equations (1) and (5)) can be Fig. 4. Exposure reduction (R), runtime influenced effectiveness (RIE), and
simplified to the RIE equation (Equation (3)). However, it is important to median effectiveness (Hmedian) as a function of cycle on-time over 24-h simu­
note that any temporal variations in outdoor concentration or indoor lation with time-varying emission events for Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Fig. 3. Effectiveness results from five effectiveness metrics (R, H, RIE, H′ , and Hmedian) as a function of (a) system runtime; and (b) cycle on-time, over 24-h simulation
with time-varying indoor emission source for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The central solid line represents the median effectiveness values and the shaded areas
represent the 25th and 75th percentile range from the Monte Carlo simulations.

6
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
4.3. Impact of time-varying emission events
We used emission status (ES) to simulate the indoor emission events
stochastically and assess the impact of the time-varying emission events.
As described in Section 3.2.3, ES is determined based on the fraction of
hour with identified emission events reported in Chan et al. [30] and a
randomly selected emission start time for each hour. Similar to Section
4.1 but with the time-varying emission events, we calculated the particle
concentrations for 1000 scenarios with and without system operation
per runtime and cycle on-time value through the Monte Carlo simula­
tion. The effectiveness results are shown in Fig. 3 (a) and (b) as a
function of runtime and cycle on-time, respectively. For both input pa­
rameters, Fig. 3 shares a similar trend and range for the effectiveness
metrics as Fig. 1. Further, it seems that the time-varying emission events
have a very limited impact on exposure reduction (R) and median
effectiveness (Hmedian) that should reflect changes in concentration in
transient state. This is due to the fact that the temporal variation indoor
emission rate is overshadowed by the larger variations in other input
parameters among simulated scenarios.
To clearly illustrate the impact of time-varying indoor emission
events and isolate its impact from other input parameters, we conducted
a single-value simulation (similar to those in Section 4.2) with varying
cycle on-time. As shown in Fig. 4, while runtime influenced effectiveness
(RIE) remains constant, R and Hmedian fluctuate over cycle on-time,
although still follow the general decreasing trend. Hmedian also gener­
ally overestimates R because of the elevations in concentration from the
background due to the emission events. Further, the periodic fluctua­
tions caused by incomplete operation cycles (shown in Figure S3 a) in
both R and Hmedian are replaced by random fluctuations in Fig. 4. These
fluctuations are caused by the coincidence of system operation and
emission events. If time-varying outdoor concentrations were used, the
temporal variations in outdoor concentration would have a similar
impact. In both cases, the magnitude of the fluctuations in effectiveness
is dependent on the magnitude and duration of changes in indoor
concentration.
By closely examining concentration profiles from the simulation, we
found that R was higher when the system operation was more syn­
chronized with the emission events (i.e., system was operating more
when the concentration was elevated). For instance, as shown in Fig. 4,
R is 21.7% at a cycle on-time of 42 min and 29.0% at a cycle on-time of
43 min. Despite the longer cycle on-time and the expected decreasing
trend, R at a cycle on-time of 43 min was higher because there happened
to be a higher fraction of system operation during the higher concen­
tration periods. This finding is consistent with the impact of initial
concentration (C0) on R that we discussed in Section 4.2. The concen­
tration profiles of these two examples are shown in Figs. S4(a) and (b),
respectively. One important implication of this finding is that in addition
to cycle on-time, the start time and the coincidence of system operation
with emission events could also influence the performance of a filtration
system. Thus, the particle removal benefit of a filtration system can be
potentially increased by closely monitoring the indoor particle concen­
tration and turning on the system at the right time.
5. Discussion
5.1. Application to portable air cleaners
While the primary focus of this work is to investigate the exposure
reduction benefit of residential forced-air systems on PM2.5, the central
model framework can also be used to evaluate the impact of portable air
cleaners. The current model can be modified by replacing the filtration
system loss rate (L2) with a ratio of the clean air delivery rate (CADR, a
product of airflow rate, and PM2.5 filtration efficiency) of the air cleaner
to the volume of its served space. Because the main purpose of portable
air cleaners is to reduce particle concentration, as opposed to satisfying
conditioning demand, the system operation status would also be
7
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
different. Both system runtime and cycle on-time of the portable air
cleaner would likely be higher. Care should be taken when applying this
model to portable air cleaners because one of the central assumptions of
this model is a well-mixed environment. It is less likely to be achieved
with the use of portable air cleaners for the entire home due to lack of air
distribution system and even for a single room due to short-circuiting (i.
e., re-entrainment of air from the outlet of the air cleaner into the inlet)
[25,27,54]. As a result, the simulated exposure reduction would likely
overestimate the actual performance of the air cleaners. However,
portable air cleaners are also likely to be positioned near people and
result in a greater reduction than the result of the simulation. Thus, the
uncertainties associated with this model would be greater when applied
to portable air cleaners.
5.2. Limitations
There are several important limitations to this work. For one, the
central assumption of our model is a well-mixed environment. Although
the assumption of perfect mixing is more likely to be achieved in homes
with central HVAC systems with a recirculation rate greater than 4 per
hour [24], this assumption is still a simplification of the mixing condi­
tion in real homes as the pollutant concentration could be different
across rooms, especially when the system is off. The actual reduction in
occupant exposure depends on the proximity to the source, the room
mixing condition, and the airflow pattern between the rooms. The
simulated exposure reduction could overestimate the actual reduction in
some instances while underestimating in other instances. Because all
five effectiveness metrics rely on the well-mixed assumption in the same
manner, we expect that the metric bias associated with imperfect mixing
conditions would be small. In-situ concentration measurements in
controlled environments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
modeling should be considered for future studies to explore the un­
certainties introduced by imperfect mixing, although the specifics of the
test environments and the boundary conditions are challenging and
important aspects to resolve in such future work.
Secondly, the system runtime and cycle on-time were not retrieved
from the same sample of homes. As a result, the potential correlation
between runtime and cycle on-time is not reflected by the simulation
results. For instance, both runtime and cycle on-time could be strongly
influenced by the size of the conditioning system relative to the condi­
tioning load. To explore this potential correlation, we plotted the
monthly mean cycle on-time from the 20 Toronto homes in Li et al. [23]
over monthly mean runtime for heating and cooling (Fig. S5). The re­
sults show that there are large variations in cycle on-times and runtimes
across all homes and between operation modes. Further, in most homes,
the cycle on-time is independent of runtime. However, we observed that
for cooling operation, many homes with runtimes lower than 10% also
have cycle on-times shorter than 10 min, likely because the air condi­
tioning unit in these homes is oversized [55]. In homes with an under­
sized air conditioning unit, we would expect the runtimes to be generally
high with longer system on-times. Another example would be that older
systems tend to have longer cycle on-times [56]. These systems are often
installed in older homes that are more prone to duct leakage, leaky
construction, and poor insulation, which in turn, leads to larger condi­
tioning loads and higher runtimes. It is hard to predict the exact impact
of these two types of combinations (low runtimes with short on-times
and high runtimes with long on-times) on the difference between
exposure reduction (R) and runtime influenced effectiveness (RIE)
because runtime and cycle on-time have opposite impacts; however, it is
important to note that in both types of homes, a combination of high
runtimes and short cycle on-times, which is important for better filtra­
tion system performance, is less likely to occur without specified user
settings.
Sampling these two parameters in pairs from the same dataset may
provide a more realistic simulation of system performance. However,
because of the large variations across homes and the difference between
T. Li and J.A. Siegel
heating and cooling, this approach may also introduce large un­
certainties to the simulation results. Further, the impact of this corre­
lation is likely to be overshadowed by the more dominant parameters,
such as air change rate, which are generally higher in older homes.
Future studies could stratify the homes in heating and cooling domi­
nated climate based on operation mode (i.e., heating or cooling), con­
ditioning system size, construction year, operation preference (i.e., if the
fan-only operation is used) to evaluate the typical system performance in
different types of homes.
Thirdly, the runtime distribution that we relied on was from smart
thermostats which logged calls of fan operation instead of the actual fan
operation [26]. The actual fan operation could be different from the
recorded data if the fan was controlled by the conditioning unit or
continued operating after the conditioning system switched off. As a
result, this runtime distribution may not be an accurate representation
of the fan operation that influences the particle removal performance of
filtration systems. This limitation is also shared by cycle on-times. Our
distribution of cycle on-times was determined by a combination of
measurement approaches that record fan or conditioning unit operation
[53]. Because the fan cycles may differ in duration and offset from
conditioning cycles in some homes [57], this cycle on-time distribution
may not be an accurate representation of the fan cycle on-times. How­
ever, these differences are likely to have a limited impact on exposure
reduction results from our Monte Carlo simulations.
A further limitation associated with cycle on-time is that we relied on
cycle on-times from homes in a heating-dominated climate, which
generally have shorter cycles on-times when compared to their coun­
terparts in cooling-dominated climates. Based on the mean cycle on-time
(18.3 min) reported in Stephens et al. [36] and the general decreasing
trend shown in Figs. 1 and 3, the absolute difference in exposure
reduction is 3% higher in our sample of heating-dominated homes when
compared to the homes in Stephens et al. [36]. However, the impact of
cycle on-time on exposure, especially at low on-time, is much smaller
than the impact of runtime.
Another limitation of this work is the interaction between runtime,
filter efficiency, and airflow over the service life of a filter. Because the
efficiency of electret filters generally decreases with particle loading
[12,13,15], the MERV 14 electret filters that are installed in systems
with higher runtimes are likely to experience greater declines in effi­
ciency. A more heavily loaded filter is more likely to cause greater filter
pressure drop and reduce the airflow rate (although the airflow rate can
be maintained in some systems at a greater energy penalty, depending
on the presence of fan speed controls). Because simulation time in our
model is only 24 h, transferring the results from this work directly to a
longer period (e.g., 3 months) would likely result in overestimation of
the actual impact of the filtration systems.
We should also note that in this work, we limited our assessment on
the removal performance of the filtration systems by effectiveness,
which is a relative metric that describes how filtration systems compete
with other removal mechanisms including deposition and ventilation.
The amount of reduction in indoor particle concentration is thus not
reflected by the effectiveness metrics. Parameters such as mean daily
outdoor concentration and time-averaged emission rate, although have
no impact on exposure reduction, would have an impact on indoor
particle concentration. Since health outcomes depend on the concen­
trations, it is important to keep in mind that the same effectiveness value
does not transfer to the same indoor concentration. Homes in more
heavily polluted regions or with stronger indoor emission sources will
benefit more from filtration. Our analysis also relied on a relatively
narrow range of input parameters for North American homes only
(except the outdoor particle concentration) because of the prevalence of
forced-air heating and cooling systems. Future modeling work should
consider a wider range of parameters, and the use of portable air
cleaners, especially from homes in heavily polluted regions where
exposure control is mostly needed to provide more information on the
exposure reduction benefits of filtration systems.
8
Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389
5.3. Implications and future studies
In this work, we examined the difference between exposure reduc­
tion (R) and four other effectiveness metrics including theoretical
effectiveness (H), runtime influenced effectiveness (RIE), runtime
factored effectiveness (H′ ), and median effectiveness (Hmedian). The
simulation results show that RIE and Hmedian generally provides a close
approximation of R, especially with cycle on-times shorter than 20 min
and L2/L1 ratios lower than 10. These two conditions are generally met
for residential systems operating to meet conditioning demands.
Consistent with previous investigations [18,26], the runtime has the
biggest impact on R. At high runtimes, all effectiveness metrics approach
H (i.e., the theoretical maximum performance). Thus, in the absence of
concentration measurements, RIE can be used to predict the maximum
particle removal performance of a typical residential filtration system in
a given home. However, care should be taken because both longer cycle
on-time and temporal variations in concentration, especially at low
runtimes, would lead to RIE overestimating the actual performance of
the system.
Further, it is important to note that RIE does not capture changes in
concentration in the transient state. From our time-varying emission rate
analysis (Section 4.3), we found that both the start time and coincidence
of system operation and concentration elevation could greatly impact
the R of the system. Thus, any analyses that focus on concentration
changes in the transient state should use real-time concentration mea­
surements, as opposed to any effectiveness metric (H, RIE, or H’) that
utilizes steady-state assumption. Given that most indoor emission events
were generated by human activities, with the same runtime (and similar
energy consequences), an optimized system operation schedule which
targets the periods with elevated concentrations will result in greater
exposure reduction than an operation schedule just cycles on and off to
meet the conditioning demand. The transient-state framework presented
in this work and R could be used to evaluate system operation schedules
and identify optimized schedules to reduce indoor exposure of particu­
late matter.
6. Conclusions
In this work, we evaluated the particle removal performance of
residential filtration systems through time-varying transient-state mass
balance models and compared the effectiveness metrics used in previous
studies. Among these metrics, exposure reduction (R) provides the most
appropriate system performance evaluation as it accounts for concen­
tration changes in transient-state. The runtime influenced effectiveness
(RIE) provides the closest approximation of R, but it overestimates the
system performance, especially at high cycle-on times and low runtimes.
The results show that system runtime has the biggest impact on exposure
reduction. At a given runtime, and consequently, with similar energy
consequences, short cycle on-times and the coincidence of system
operation with emission events can improve the removal performance of
the system. Even this improvement in exposure reduction is relatively
small at low runtimes (less than 10% at a runtime of 18%), but it could
lead to a large reduction in absolute concentration and occupant expo­
sure in indoor environments with high particle concentrations. Thus,
future studies should focus on the optimization of operation strategies to
increase R without causing increases in energy consumption.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank NSERC (RGPIN-2014-06698) for
T. Li and J.A. Siegel Building and Environment 187 (2021) 107389

financial support. Tianyuan Li is partially supported by an Ontario Report, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning
Engineers, Atlanta, GA, 2019.
Graduate Scholarship.
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