Vayu Labs: Design and Development of a High-Throughput, Cost-Effective Indoor Air Purification System for Indian Urban Environments

To design, prototype, and validate a high-throughput, cost-effective indoor air purification system that inverts the conventional approach.

Existing purifiers rely on high-efficiency filters, leading to low throughput, rapid clogging, high costs, and no gas-phase pollutant removal in Indian conditions.

Classroom air cleaning post-assembly, residential bedroom cleaning before sleep, hospital waiting areas, kitchen/cooking areas, construction-adjacent offices.

Urban air pollution in Indian cities, particularly Delhi, presents a severe and persistent public health crisis. Particulate matter concentrations routinely exceed WHO guidelines by 10–20×, contributing to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular conditions, and reduced life expectancy. Ex- isting indoor air purifiers prioritize high single-pass filtration efficiency (H13/H14 HEPA) at the expense of air throughput, resulting in slow room-level cleaning, rapid filter clogging in high- dust environments, and high recurring maintenance costs — making them both ineffective and unaffordable for the majority of Indian households and institutions. This project, undertaken as Vayu Labs, presents the design, prototyping, and validation of an alternative indoor air purification system that inverts the conventional approach: instead of maximizing single-pass filter efficiency, the system maximizes volumetric throughput through a multi-stage filtration architecture — a washable G4 pre-filter, an activated carbon with potas- sium permanganate (ACF-K) sponge for gas-phase pollutant removal, and a medium-efficiency F6/F7 main filter. Physics-based simulation demonstrates that this 3-stage system achieves a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of 634 m3/hr with a t 90 of 3.95 minutes in an 18.1 m3 room — 42% higher CADR and 29% faster room cleaning than a single-stage H14 HEPA system — at 79% lower annual filter cost (≈INR 11,553 vs. INR 55,233). The project combines hardware engineering (airflow system design, filter selection, sensor in- tegration, enclosure CAD) with entrepreneurial validation (customer discovery, competitive analysis, institutional go-to-market strategy, and pitch competition participation). The system targets both residential consumers (INR 8,000–10,000 retail) and institutional buyers (schools, government offices) where the cost-per-CADR advantage is most compelling. A seed grant of INR 1,00,000 was secured through the E-Pitch Caf´e 10th Edition (Budding Star category) to fund prototype fabrication and pilot deployments.

Field of Study: Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development (aligned with UN SDG 9: Industry & Innovation, SDG 11: Sustainable Cities, and SDG 13: Climate Action)