Dyson's Newest Air Purifier Can Destroy Formaldehyde in Your Home

Dyson’s newest air purifier can capture and destroy formaldehyde in your home

By Emily Price September 30, 2019

Dyson announced their newest purifying fan Tuesday, a device capable of not only cooling a room, but heating it as well. The Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Cryptomic is the company’s first device to continuously destroy formaldehyde that’s been released into the air in your home from household items. Its previous air purifiers could only capture it, not get rid of it altogether.

Formaldehyde can be found in almost everything in your home, including furniture, mattresses, electronics, air fresheners, and more. Breathing in formaldehyde can exacerbate allergies, and has been linked to cancer. You don’t want to be breathing it in when you don’t have to. It’s also very hard to figure out how to capture it.

“Our chemist team has been searching for various methods to solve this problem for the past three years,” said Dr. Nathan Brown, head of research at Dyson. “We have tested more than 20 different catalysts – materials that would enable a chemical reaction to take place, but isn’t consumed or used up by the reaction. We ultimately identified the mineral Cryptomelane as the ideal catalyst.”

Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Cryptomic Image used with permission by copyright holder

Essentially the device is using the mineral Cryptomelane as a catalyst to trap formaldehyde in the air. Cryptomelane has billions of atom-sized tunnels, which are the perfect size to trap and destroy formaldehyde in the air. The destruction is done through oxidation, the company said.

Here’s how Dyson describes the process:

“There is an oxygen-rich surface on the catalyst that works to destroy formaldehyde by removing electrons during the chemical reaction causing it to break into the smaller, safer molecules – carbon dioxide and water,” the company said in a statement. “The amount of carbon dioxide and water that results from this process is very small. For reference, the technology panel produces 20,000x less water and CO₂ than a mouse gives off breathing per day.”

Beyond removing formaldehyde, the device can also capture 99.97% of microscopic allergens in the air and pollutants as small as .03 microns.

Aside from keeping your house’s air clean, the Dyson Pure Cool Cryptomic can be used to cool your home with an oscillating fan and the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Cryptomic works as both a fan during cooler weather and a heater in the cold.

A built-in thermostat can keep your room at whatever temperature you set. Using Dyson’s app, you can also monitor the device and the pollution in your home from afar. Inside your house, an included remote control allows you to control the device hands-free.

Both the Dyson Pure Cool Cryptomic and Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Cryptomic are available starting Tuesday for $649.99 and $749.99, respectively. Both come in in white/gold and gunmetal/bronze.

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