Exploring the expiry timer on a Sharp plasmacluster module.

The plasmacluster air cleaners must be one of Sharp's most successful products. They're MASSIVE in Japan, with almost every home and public space having one. The other prominent Japanese companies have their own variants on the technology too.

They're basically just an advanced air ioniser with some very bold advertising claims.
In reality, devices like this do emulate nature in the way it creates active air molecules by natural phenomena. It's why outdoors air is always "fresher" than indoors air where the active molecules deplete rapidly and do not normally get replaced.

The most common method of freshening the indoor air is to produce a very faint electrostatic discharge that does mind-boggling things to air. It literally strips molecules apart into individual atoms, and they can recombine in either stable molecules or unstable variants like hydroxyl radicals (a molecule composed of a single atom of oxygen and hydrogen) or other active molecules like ozone (O3 - three oxygen atoms) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2 - two atoms of oxygen and two of hydrogen). The amounts generated are usually lower or equal to natural outdoor air. The short lived unstable molecules can deactivate viruses and oxidise pollutants - returning to stable molecules in the process.

The first units used to use sharp metal needles to create the plasma, but modern units use tufts of carbon fibres, as they are long lasting and very efficient.

Part of the reason I got this unit was to see how the construction has changed, and what was being used to expire the modules after a preprogrammed amount of use. Unfortunately the unit was so well potted in hard resin that I damaged the circuitry in the process. Otherwise I'd have explored the data on the protection chip.


I'll keep an eye open for an affordable module or dead unit to see if I can read the data.


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