Andrea air purifier makes plants 1000% more effective

Having plants around your home is beneficial for many reasons. The most familiar benefit being the removal of CO2 from the air subsequent production of O2, but they also help remove toxins from the air keeping the room fresh. A French product designer and a Harvard University biomedical engineer teamed up back in 2007 to see if they could improve on this process.

[Image Source: Andrea]

They came up with Andrea the air purifier and it recently hit the market. The idea is to accelerate the air flow through a capsule containing a house plant of your choice, which can clean and oxygenate the air in your home up to 1000% more effectively than the plant itself. Plant not included, the current price is around $200.

The battery powered device has a simple fan at the side that draws air in and around the leaves where a second lower fan then draws the air through the soil, before passing through a tray of water and back into your home. This means that the air experiences four layers of natural filtration.

[Image Source: Andrea]

Firstly, the air is filtered by the leaves through phytofiltration, then microbes on the plants roots metabolise more toxins and the soil also filters out other larger contaminants like a traditional charcoal filter. As it passes through the water, which also keeps the plant moist, even more toxins are trapped before the clean air is reintroduced to the room.

It also doubles as decor, providing a futuristic almost space-esque look, and that's more than just it's appearance.

The design is apparently based on research performed by NASA back in the 80's, definitely something worth looking into for space travel of course. The team's own research claims that it is far superior than traditional carbon-based air filters and at $200, it is also cheaper than most good quality purifiers.