When it comes to urine, the smell spreads fast, especially in a place with poor airflow. and the whole home gets filled with a bad odor. Anyone with a child at home can attest to it.
An air purifier could be a solution as it works quite well against dust and danders. But can air purifier remove urine smell?
Fortunately for us, air purifiers can get rid of all kinds of odors, such as urine smell, pet odor, and cooking odor, if you use the right air purifier.
However, that depends on a few things including the type of air purifier you are using. In the next sections of this article, we’ll discuss how will an air purifier get rid of cat urine smell.
How Can an Air Purifier Remove Urine Smell?
There are more than a few types of air purifiers and several types of filters. Each of the filters can be categorized from minimum effectiveness to maximum effectiveness, depending on the technology.
If you want to remove bad odors from your home, install an air purifier with an activated carbon filter. It has the technology to catch and remove pesky odors from your home.
While HEPA filters are quite adept at catching and filtering small particles, they are no match for activated carbon filters.
These filters can catch even smaller particles with ease. The closer you set up the air purifier, the faster it will get rid of the smell and leave better freshness.
How Does an Activated Carbon Filter Work?
It’s the main competitor of HEPA filters in today’s market. It utilizes a carbon-based air purification system where a thin layer of activated carbon is placed as a mesh.
This carbon filter isn’t like a typical filter with a mesh. Instead it has tiny cavities on its surface that can catch gas molecules and odor particles by absorbing them.
According to most carbon filter manufacturers, they can remove 95% of the odors. However, as these filters don’t work well against dust, it’s good to have both HEPA and carbon filters installed for optimum performance.
How Does an Air Purifier Get Rid of Urine Smell?
To understand how the air purification tech does it, we need to understand how the smell is present in the air.
- Odorants
It’s an aroma compound found in almost everything in nature. So, yes, both flower and urine have odorants.
These particles float in the air and are called odorants. Yes, the odor comes from this word. These are even smaller than dust particles and cannot be filtered out by your ordinary filters.
- Odorant Absorption
These are so small that they cannot be trapped. However, with the activated charcoal filters, the air purifier can remove them from the air.
When the air purifier uses a carbon filter, the urine’s odorants in the air pass through it, and the thin layer of carbon absorbs them and retains them.
And that is why each time you use a carbon filter-incorporated air purifier, it starts to lose efficiency. It’s because of the trapped odorants in the filter. So the normal procedure is to change the filter every 6 months.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can HEPA Filters Remove Urine Smell?
Compared to the normal average filters, a HEPA filter is considered to be more effective against odors. Therefore, it has good effectiveness; however, it has limitations.
For example, HEPA filters can remove particles from the air if they’re 0.3 microns or larger. It’s designed to remove bigger particles and allergens like Pollen and mold.
It just can’t trap in fumes and odor.
2. What Is A HEPA filter?
A HEPA filter can be described as a High-efficiency Particulate filter. It has a good reputation as the most effective filter in the market. While the claim is debatable, thanks to the carbon filters, you can’t deny their quality. It can eliminate 99.7% of the particles present in the air.
It’s a true high-efficiency filter that gets a 190 score according to the ASTM D6675 standards.
3. Do Air Purifiers Use Both HEPA and Activated Carbon filters?
Many air purifiers in the market using both HEPA and Activated carbon filters in their system. But you won’t find them both in the same purifier in most cases.
4. Do Air Purifiers Get Rid of Smoke?
Yes, but only the air purifiers that have a carbon filter inside. HEPA filters don’t work well against smoke. But just like odorants, smoke particles are also absorbed in the filter and retained so that it doesn’t pollute your air.
Final Words
So, can air purifier remove urine smell? I think we have the answer. If your air purifier has a carbon filter installed inside, it’s a highly effective tool to keep your home fresh, even with your kids and pets. Just make sure to keep your home clean because an air purifier alone isn’t enough if the urine isn’t cleaned.
Last Updated on February 26, 2023
