I recently stayed in an apartment that didnt have central air so I created a corsi-rosenthal box since the smoke from the Canadian wildfires were so bad.
After 30 days of continuous use, with very minimal periods of it being turned off, this is what the filters look like!
It’s disgusting yet also so satisfying to see the filters get darker from debris, dust, and dirt.
Edit: typos
“Corsi-Rosenthal Box” sounds like it’s some theoretical physics thought experiment, but no it’s some filters and a box fan.
Be tempted to build one of those for my shop.
I thought it was for filtering weed smoke, designed by the famous grower and strain creator Ed Rosenthal.
Think it was a covid thing.
No word on ed being the rosenthal in question.
Someone posted a link to Wikipedia in the comments, came across their names:
Oh, that’s disappointing.
could be his brother
Not the weed guy though.
Oh. A CEO of a filter company. I sort of wondered why I couldn’t just tape a single filter to a fan, why it required four of them. Maybe it has something to do with air flow limitations, or maybe it has something to do with the guy making a profit on every filter sold lol
Pretty sure its about creating negative suction below the fan. Instead of just pulling air from the intake side of the fan, its pulling it from all 4 directions. Theoretically the air flow going through the filter would be at least 4x but probably more in practice.
Well the rate of airflow through the fan is at its maximum when there are no filters attached to it. Each filter likely slows down airflow if hooked up in a “series” pattern, but you’re right that having these four in “parallel” will increase flow compared to one strapped directly to it. I’m sure there’s a problem with reducing the airflow too much, because the fans motor would start to burn, and I’d guess that hoisting the fan up in the air rather than standing upright on the ground would improve airflow.
That being said, I’d need to do it myself and see what strapping a single filter to a fan does. I have hunch it wouldn’t burn out the motor, and I imagine it’d still be effective. If the rate of airflow isn’t severely reduced with a single filter, that’d just mean the same amount of air is being forced through a filter in either case (1 vs 4 filters).
Of course the single filter would wear out four times as fast so it probably won’t make a difference in how many you buy in the long run. I’m just sort of rambling at this point but it’s a neat concept to think about.
These have been around for a long time as DIY filters for folks, I remember seeing one of these on Reddit before comments were a thing.
Once upon a time Reddit drove you to interact with other websites instead of shitposting your best hot take about the title of the post someone else didn’t even visit.
Comments truly ruined Reddit
Long time ago I made my own activated carbon filter from plans I found online out of chicken wire, some duct parts, of course activated carbon, and pantyhose. got some funny looks when buying that last one, but it worked like a freaking charm.
custom filters are common in the aquarium hobby, lots of fun pipe fittings to play with
That a good idea ! Didn’t think about it.
well…
hope you can keep up!
Yeah may be a little overkill
I’m going to start talking in vague terms about my own designs for a “Corsi-Rosenthal Box” when I want to sound smart.
It’ll be great if anyone bothers to look it up.
I mean, it sounds like an Einstein-Rosen bridge.
“My Corsi-Rosenthal Box is designed to efficiently accelerate particles inwards. The particles are then ‘captured’ using a special filtering technique, and separated from the air molecules which are allowed through.”
It’s removing particulates though.
So you could call it and “anti-particulate vertical fluid acceleration device” maybe.