Cook County News Herald

ISD 166 campus gets air filtration system



ISD 166 Maintenance Director Tom Nelson points to two newly installed sensors on the school’s ductwork. Sensors like these have been placed in various locations throughout the school and they monitor the much improved air quality since a new air filtration system has been installed. Staff photo/Brian Larsen

ISD 166 Maintenance Director Tom Nelson points to two newly installed sensors on the school’s ductwork. Sensors like these have been placed in various locations throughout the school and they monitor the much improved air quality since a new air filtration system has been installed. Staff photo/Brian Larsen

The Detroit Lions football team training facilities and ISD 166 school building share some of the same components.

Technicians who were working on improving air filtration for the Detroit Lions brought some needed tubing from that job to Cook County for the school’s project, said Tom Nelson, who heads up the ISD 166 maintenance department.

And now that the work is done, staff and students at ISD 166 are breathing easier with the newly installed ion bipolar air filtration system.

Johnson Controls partnered with AtmostAir to create an air purification system that continuously disinfects and decontaminates indoor air in buildings.

Last April, Johnson Controls introduced AtmostAir to the Australian market in response to COVID-19. The air purification system has been credited in part with keeping COVID-19 cases to low numbers in the land down under.

How does it work?

The air purification system works because it produces bipolar ions that attach themselves to airborne viruses, mold, fungi, spores, odors and pollutants, and renders them inactive.

At ISD 166, the air handling purification system was installed two weeks ago by Protocol, who performed the work through Johnson Controls. The system covers all of the classrooms, offices and halls, but not the school’s two gyms.

“Not five minutes after we had the system (which is silent) up and running, a teacher came out of her classroom and said she noticed a difference in the air quality,” said Nelson.

The schools’ gyms were excluded because they are large spaces that should be safer than the confined spaces of classrooms or hallways. Plus, the cost would have doubled if those areas were included, noted Nelson.

Before the equipment was placed in the school ductwork, particulate numbers were at 10 microns. Once the system was activated, monitors attached in various locations on the ductwork throughout the school read zero, Nelson said. Likewise, the indoor CO2 numbers went from 800 to 1200, to an average of 400 throughout the building once the air filtration equipment was installed and activated, he added.

“Right now, the air inside the building is as clean as the air outside of the building,” exclaimed Tom, who can track and read the sensors on his cell phone.

The cost of purchasing and installing the new technology was about $77,000, not including paying the electricians, he said. Those dollars came from referendum money and Cares Act funds awarded by the government to the school to fight COVID-19.

“We didn’t use any money from the general fund to make this purchase,” noted school board member Deb White.

A proposal from Johnson Controls to install ION bipolar air filtration in some air-handling units was discussed at a school board meeting some months ago.

During that first meeting, Nelson, traveling back from Duluth, was brought into the conversation through his cell phone. He told the school board that the system would pay for itself in three years because of energy savings due to the school not having to run air handlers 24 hours of the day. He also noted that the way the system works, flu (coronavirus) germs are killed almost instantly on contact with the ionization. When kids eventually come back and fill classroom seats, the school should receive fewer sick days because of how the air is treated.

Principal Dorr said his son’s college had also installed the same system, and he was told it was the gold standard of air filtration treatment.

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