Hi and thank you for tuning in today.
My name is Charlie Park and I’m the Global Category Director for Environmental Care at Dyson.
And I’m here today on Oxford Street in London at the Dyson Demo Store
to talk to you about some of the new exciting technology that we’re launching today.
Now at Dyson, any new category that we want to get into,
we always want to make a step change in product performance
by using new technology.
And in this store, you’ll see many products which you may already be familiar with.
So over here we have our hair care range, with machines such as the Dyson Corrale.
The cordless straightener that uses flexible plates to ensure that the hair is corralled and doesn’t
see excessive temperature so it limits damage to the hair when straightening.
And over here we’ve got our floorcare range, including our Dyson V11
our most powerful, intelligent cord-free vacuum cleaner.
And here we have our environmental care range of purifiers.
A heater purifier, a humidifier purifier and our tower purifier.
And that’s why I’m really here today, to talk to you about
new technologies that we’re launching within this category.
Now over the course of the last year, we’ve all spent a lot
more time at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We spend up to 90% of our time indoors.
Our homes have become our workplaces, our schools,
our gyms and every day we breathe up to 10,000 litres of air.
So to put that into perspective
this balloon has about 14 litres in it.
So, 10,000 litres?
That’s a lot of air.
Now we’ve all become aware of air quality as a result of the pandemic.
But what people are often still not aware of are the other sources of air pollution that are within your homes.
So, if you’re cooking or cleaning, if you’ve got pets or you have flowers and plants that give off pollen.
But also, air pollution can come in from outside, so if you have an idling car or, in our case here today
a big red bus outside, fumes can come in and get caught in your home.
And the same, if you live near any building construction work that is going on, you can get particulates
that come into your home and get trapped there.
So, I’m here today to talk about our latest technology in the Environmental Care category.
We’re here to launch some brand new purifiers, with some brand new technology within them.
So, I’m really pleased today to be able to introduce to you:
The Dyson Purifier Formaldehyde range.
Now these machines still have the Dyson iconic look and they look very similar on the outside
but they are packed full of new technology.
They still can sense and capture particulates and VOCs and project clean air.
But they now can also sense and destroy formaldehyde.
On top of that, we’ve improved the sealing of the machines
so these machines are now HEPA sealed
so you get HEPA H13 grade filtration through the whole machine
so not just filters, that’s the whole machine.
And this machine, is 20% quieter.
I’m going to now introduce you to Ben, who’s one of our senior design engineers
who’s going to talk you through some of the technology in this product in more detail.
Ben – over to you.
Thanks Charlie.
Hi everyone, yes, my name is Ben and I am one of the design engineers here at Dyson.
Now as Charlie explained there, these new products have still the capability of sensing, capturing and projecting
and I’m going to tell you a little bit more about the new technology that’s gone inside of them.
So, they still sense – and they sense things like PM2.5 and PM10 – from pollen, pet dander, smog.
They sense VOCs from things like cleaning products inside the home, and maybe candles.
And they also sense NO² or city pollutants from things like the bus outside.
But they can now also sense formaldehyde.
Now they still capture, and they still capture things like your particulate matter and they still capture your VOCs
but now we can also destroy the formaldehyde.
So first I’m going to tell you a bit more about the sensing technology that’s changed here.
By introducing our new sensor for formaldehyde.
It’s a solid-state formaldehyde sensor
which is hidden just behind these two slots that are additional to the previous product.
Now, the solid-state sensor has been designed specifically
to sense formaldehyde and what we need to do
is put that formaldehyde into context for you.
Why should you care about the formaldehyde, what is formaldehyde?
Now formaldehyde is a potentially harmful VOC or gaseous pollutant.
It’s found in the home more prevalently than outside and it might get sealed and trapped inside of your home.
Now that’s because it’s also emitted from everyday items
that me and you are all familiar with that you find in your home.
Pressed wood products, like plywood, furnishings, beds, couches.
And if you’ve put a new kitchen in recently, had a kitchen re-fit
you might have more formaldehyde in the home.
If you have added new furniture to your home recently
again there may be more formaldehyde from that product in your home.
Painted, varnished, new flooring.
All of these things might increase that level of formaldehyde in your home.
So, now we know what formaldehyde is
we need to understand how it is that we have developed this sensor
and what technology we’ve put into the product.
So, when we were developing this new formaldehyde sensor
we were looking at lots of different formaldehyde technologies
to try and judge which one was best.
Now, our solid-state sensor was put into the same chamber as several alternative sensors.
Now, when they were in this same chamber together what we found is that the other electrolyte sensors
were very easily fooled into thinking other things, other VOCs
or commonly found chemicals in the home were also formaldehyde.
Now, if we put something as simple as orange peel into a chamber with both of these sensors.
What we’ll see is our solid-state technology does not react to that orange peel.
But, the alternative sensor does react and is easily tricked into thinking that there is formaldehyde present.
Now when we’re developing these sensors
there were several things that we noticed that were improved in performance.
They’re much more precise than the alternatives.
Two, they’re much less likely to be fooled by the other pollution that we find in the home
those other smells and scents
as we’ve just demonstrated there.
And number three, because we’re using a solid-state technology and not a liquid or gel-based electrolyte,
we keep our performance over time.
So, it’s more precise, it’s less easily fooled, and it also lasts the lifetime of the product.
Now, I can imagine you’re asking yourselves now
now that we can sense that pollution, that formaldehyde
and now that we’ve displayed it on the product
so that you know that it’s a problem in your home
what are we going to do to tackle that pollution source?
So, that leads us on to our new technology in this product.
We still have that HEPA filtration in the front, along with the activated carbon.
The HEPA to remove the particulates and the carbon for the gases.
But we now have a third layer, which is this new catalytic technology.
It’s a Selective Catalytic Oxidation filter and it specifically targets formaldehyde.
Now, it utilises the Cryptomelane mineral inside of this filter,
which is perfectly shaped with nanoscopic tunnels that are exactly
the right shape and size to interact with the formaldehyde molecule.
So, when a formaldehyde molecule comes into contact with the surface of this mineral
it gives it oxygen and by oxidising it
it turns one molecule of formaldehyde
into one molecule of CO² and one molecule of H²O, in tiny quantities.
So that is simply a small amount of water vapour and a small amount of carbon dioxide and nothing else.
So that means that this is not captured.
It is not stored in the filter, like you find with other filtration techniques.
It is destroyed at a molecular level.
And what’s more interesting with this still, is that it is constantly replenishing the oxygen on the surface
of the catalyst with the oxygen that’s readily available in the air.
What that means is that you never need to change the filter.
This catalytic element of the filter will last the entire lifetime of the product, along with that sensor.
So, you can now sense the formaldehyde, you can capture other pollution
and you can destroy that formaldehyde at the source.
Now, once you’ve gone through all of those filtration stages
the product then uses the motor bucket to increase the pressure
in the amplifier to project the air into the room.
And as Charlie mentioned earlier, we now have not just a H13 HEPA rating in the filter
we have that rating in the entire product.
So, if you look at this video now, you’ll see what that means in the real world.
We have one of our products in a sealed chamber
with the inlet and the filters in the bottom part of the chamber
and the amplifier on the outside.
When we introduce a pollution event into that chamber,
the product turns on and begins filtering down that pollution.
The machine draws that air through the filters and projects it out through the amplifier.
And what you can see is that there is no smoke, dust or any orange left on the amplifier
and this is because it has all gone through that filter
and all been filtered first.
What’s more, if you take the filters off of the machine
you’ll see internal in the machine there is no pollution that has escaped the filter.
There is no pollution on the inside of the filter either
and on the outside, it’s clear that all of that pollution
has been trapped in that HEPA layer.
Now how did we achieve this H13 level filtration on the entire product?
Well what we had to do was go back to basics on this
and have our engineers look at every possible opportunity inside of the machine
for any bypass of that filtration layer.
If you look at this demonstration
it shows you that we found 24 different points that could be potential leak paths in the system.
We looked at every single one of these in isolation and did individual sealing and leaking tests on each one.
If any of them were found to be providing any leak at all, we added in a high pressure seal and adding in seals
into every one of these regions, along with the seals that are
already on the particulate filter, allowed us to achieve that full-machine HEPA efficiency.
So now I’m going to pass you back on to Charlie
and he’s going to tell you a little bit more about how we achieved a 20%
reduction in acoustics on the machine.
Charlie, back to you.
Thank you, Ben.
So how did we make those acoustic improvements?
So, at Dyson we have five acoustic chambers in our technology centres, and we are always using them to
continually iterate our design, looking for opportunities to reduce the acoustics of our products.
So how we’ve done it, is we’ve looked for every opportunity
to smooth the airflow between the motor and the outlet.
By doing this it stops any turbulence, which creates noise but also wastes energy.
So, by doing that not only do we stop any noise from the airflow itself
but it allows us to drop the motor speed
so we reduce the acoustics at the source, being the motor.
So, there we have it.
The new Dyson Purifier Formaldehyde range.
Not only does it now sense and destroy formaldehyde
it is H13 level HEPA filtration at whole machine
not just filter, and the tower purifier is 20% quieter.
All of the information of what the machine is up to
with regards to removing pollution is displayed on the LCD screen
and can also be seen on the Dyson Link app, where all these machines are connected to
which gives you enriched data about the history of what the machine has done
with regards to removing pollution.
I’m pleased to say as well that we have also developed a commercial variant of these machines,
which have all of the same features but will also support ventilation in commercial spaces.
So, if you would like to learn more about these machines
then please head down to your Dyson Demo store.
We have Dyson Demo stores all around the world
where you can see the technology on display that I’ve described today.
If you cannot visit a Dyson Demo store at the moment
because of local restrictions, then please head to the Dyson website
where you can take a tour of a virtual demo store
which will show off the technology on these products that we’ve been through today
but also all of these machines in our store.
If you would like more information about this specific launch event
then also head to the Dyson Newsroom.
So, thank you all for tuning in today and stay safe.