Sharp Ion plasmacluster

Having initially posted about this machine I bought, I see a lot of people searching for information about Sharp’s Ion plasmacluster and thought it would be useful to add some more information about this.

Original Post
The original post I did can be found here at shibuya246.com

According to the pamphlet, Plasmacluster technology emits positive and negative ions into the air, and thereby deactivates impurities. They are designed to combat dust, allergens, pollen and other air borne particles such as tobacco smoke, cold viruses etc.

My experience
I bought the machine because hearing that influenza was going to be widespread this year, I really wanted to make sure I did not catch it and so far I have not had a cold. I have used the machine non-stop since I bought it and found it easy to use, fairly quiet and of great value.

The machine I bought covers about a 6-8 tatami mat area. Outside of Japan I am not sure what size that translates to, but it is an average size Japanese room and probably an average size western hotel room. The space of 1 tatami mat was meant to be the space required for one person to sleep lying down. Without digressing too much here is a link to Wikipedia talking about Tatami

Sharp installing units in own offices
Recently Sharp announced that they would be installing 10,000 of their industrial plasmacluster machines in their Sharp offices and factories.
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci_place/index.html
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/090119.html

The above articles discuss the larger industrial units where Sharp says:

Plasmacluster Ion generators use Sharp’s proprietary Plasmacluster Ion technology to decompose and deactivate harmful airborne substances such as mold fungus, viruses, and allergens. These generators are designed to thoroughly deactivate harmful airborne substances in large areas, such as offices and conference rooms.

Although the technology for the smaller units is the same, just they dont cover as large an area.

Technology Explanation
Here is an easy to understand article about the technology with some pictures to aid the explanation:
http://www.theairpurifiers.com/sharp_plasmacluster_ion.html

Sharp announce Bird Flu tests
In a conference focussed on plasma cluster technology,the ability to handle “bird flu” was discussed.
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci2/index.html
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/080827.html
http://sharp-world.com/corporate/g_topix/pci/index.html

Other Info
Here is a blog post about the conference finding
http://www.clinicallergy.com/ion-air-purifier-plasmacluster-ions-vs-bird-flu-virus.php

and some other links to check
http://www.blogcatalog.com/topic/plasmacluster/

Follow up
If anyone has any specific questions that you want to leave as a comment, I will try and get the answers and follow up.